Over the past few years, retailers across the industry have been sounding the alarm about a major and growing problem: retail theft. Companies have made many attempts to combat this, such as Walmart’s threat to close the retailer or Walgreens’ new retail store design. Dwelling Depot has now started locking up more items in its store, but many buyers aren’t quite as excited. Read on to find out why one employee said it was “very inconvenient.”
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Shoplifting has increased dramatically over the past few years. According to a 2022 report by the National Retail Federation (NRF), more than 72 percent of stores said they had seen an increase in the risk of retail theft since the onset of the pandemic. The NRF also found that organized retail crime averaged more than $700,000 per billion in sales in 2020, an increase of more than 50 percent from five years ago.
“Organized retail crime is what I call theft for greed, not theft for want,” Scott Glenn, vice president of asset security for residential warehouses, consulted ABC Information in June. “[But] They don’t just come to a residential warehouse and decide to go home … they go to Goal, they go to Lowe’s, they go to CVS, they go anywhere. “
Glenn told the news outlet that this year alone, Dwelling Depot has investigated about 400 suspected organized retail thefts — several shoplifting incidents a day at its stores. As a result, home improvement retailers lose “billions of dollars” every year, according to Home Warehouse officials.
Like many other retailers, Dwelling Depot has decided to lock down certain gadgets to combat retail theft. But employees at the company recently told the San Francisco Journal that more and more items are being secured from customers. While residential warehouses began locking more expensive equipment, such as energy equipment, behind cages in January, staff say even regular items are now locked, the outlet reported.
“It used to be a big-ticket item, but now even the detergent is locked away,” an employee at the residential warehouse retailer in Emeryville, California, told the San Francisco Daily. According to the news outlet, locked merchandise now includes cheap items like phone chargers, work gloves and bathroom drain covers.
when greatest life Dwelling Depot was contacted about these stories, and the retailer confirmed that it has been buying more gadgets due to shoplifting concerns. “As organized retail crime continues to increase, we have gradually increased the number of items that may be targeted,” Evelyn FornesDwelling Depot’s senior director of public affairs, said in a release.
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Consumers have long complained of locked-up items at other retailers, including Dwelling Depot. But now, even the workers themselves seem more annoyed by the safety measures. “It just turned into a nuisance,” a residential warehouse employee who asked to remain anonymous told San Francisco Normal.
Others said they would see the difficulty it created for buyers, annoyed that only certain retailer partners could display certain items. “I can’t unlock the {hardware} because I don’t have the code, and they usually can’t unlock the pipes because I’m the only one with the code,” another Dwelling Depot employee told the new store. “Very inconvenient.”
However, complaints from customers and employees are unlikely to change things. According to Fornes, locking merchandise is a “universal method of preventing theft,” and Dwelling Depot can use it to ensure the safety of customers and employees during aggressive shoplifting attempts. “Energy tools and other high-value, high-risk products will always have multiple levels of safety because they’re one of the most attractive things to unhealthy actors,” she said greatest life.
Fornes also said that Dwelling Depot has not received a clear objection from most customers. “Most consumers said they didn’t want affiliates to unlock the box because that meant the product was often sold in stores,” she said. “Having said that, we are always exploring new and advanced ways to provide consistent safety and comfort to the vast majority of our customers.”
