Walmart and Target Report Major Losses Due To Shoplifting
A few weeks ago I came across a Tiktok where someone was teaching others how to “beat the system”. This included renting a car for a day and taking the tires off and replacing them with your own used, worn tires. It also, went into detail how you can search out clearance stickers and stick it on regularly priced merchandise as well as other “hacks” to “save money”. Remember the girl I was telling you about who buying luxury foundations at Sephora and refilling it with drugstore foundation and returning it? This isn’t a hack, this isn’t a saving money tip, this isn’t beating the system. This is stealing and retailers are suffering for it. This a major thing on social media. I see Tiktoks constantly showing people with huge carts of items just walking out the door of major retailers. And the sad thing is, for the safety of their employees, the chains just let it happen. And I can understand that because really, if you’re working retailer part of your job shouldn’t be to run after someone who is stealing a cart of goods. What if they get violent?
The loss of items to retail theft, organized crime, damage, vendor fraud, and other factors is a major issue for Target and Walmart at the moment. According to Target’s CEO there’s a huge amount of retail theft in a variety of forms and caused a 400 million dollar to Target’s retailer’s gross profit margin for the year.
More and more stores in New York have security guards right at the door because of these new “smash and grab” type robberies that take place. Apparently one such instance of this happened at Nordstrom in California where the thieves got away with $300,000 worth of merchandise in one go!
This leads us retailers locking up higher priced items like makeup and beauty. Remember Walmart did it? Remember Walmart getting sued for locking up beauty products?
Honestly, have items locked up behind plexiglass can be a really frustrating experience. Getting someone to actually unlock the glass for you is a chore. Also, I like to read the back of boxes, look at items, etc..before I decide if I want it.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said, “That impacts that consumer interaction,” Andrews said. “That’s why people are going to retail stores, they want to be around the merchandise, they want to touch it, they want to have those interactions, so it’s a fine line of how do you get that great consumer experience, but how do you protect your product?” But as I recall back in 2019 Walmart was all about locking things up!
But sadly, we’re headed in a new direction and if retailers like Target and Walmart continue to experience such great loss we may very well be headed for seeing things behind locked glass cases at our favorite retailers.