![]() the consumer has to be a little concerned about that," Johnston said.īrooke DiPalma is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.Walmart plans to close 'underperforming' store locations "If you can take a designer handbag and resell it for 30% off online. ![]() for the high-volume sellers." He added that it falls on these platforms and consumers to report suspicious activity and flag "bad actors who get through the net." The platforms on watch range from small platforms to big-name online marketplaces like Amazon ( AMZN) and Walmart, where stolen goods can be resold.Ĭarl Settlemyer, an attorney in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said "it's sort of a running obligation. Per the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), more than a dozen state attorneys general have launched organized retail crime task forces to coordinate investigations between retailers and prosecutors.īack in June 2023, Congress also passed a law that tasks the FTC with implementing new baseline requirements for online marketplaces to collect, verify, and disclose some information about high-volume third-party sellers - those with 200 or "more separate sales or transactions of new or unused consumer products and $5,000 or more in gross revenues" in any continuous 12-month period during the past 24 months. including the consumer, to take action," Johnston said. "What we're seeing today requires the government, the community, the retailer, everyone. The retailer brought inventory growth down by 5.54% year over year.īut ultimately, it's all hands on deck to curb theft. 3 basis points up, really before COVID, as we rolled out self-checkout, and since then, it's come back down a little bit."Īt its annual meeting in June, McMillon said lower inventory helps since shrink is correlated with higher inventory levels. In a call with investors in May, Costco ( COST) CEO Richard Galanti said inventory shrink "fluctuated. Some studies and reports have documented customers not paying for items in self-checkout transactions or swapping price tags for lower-priced goods when scanning higher-ticket items.īut the extent of self-checkout theft is not widely understood. Walmart's McMillon said that some jurisdictions need to take more action on retail-related crime as companies focus on the aspects of shrink they can control.įor instance, the rising use of self-checkout has gained attention as a source of inventory loss. While locked-up merchandise may be inconvenient, "think of the opposite when the mother of a newborn tries to go get formula and the merchandise isn't there because it was just shelf-swept," NRF's Johnston said. Some feel the extra precautions are necessary, however. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) Leo Pichardo, a store associate at Gristedes supermarket, retrieves a container of Tide laundry soap from a cabinet that has been locked due to retail theft on Tuesday Jan. "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?" "That impacts that consumer interaction," Andrews said. ![]() Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the company prefers to "never lock anything up" as it's bad for business and interferes with customer engagement. More retailers have locked up higher-ticket items behind plexiglass and installed cameras and other security systems, but these measures come with trade-offs. The problem is a double-edged sword for retailers and consumers alike. "So until there are things put in place to mitigate damage or to resist this current surge, there's going to be an increase in these types of activities." Locked-up merchandise 'a fine line' "They're in a position now where these types of flash robberies, these smash-and-grabs - or they've been called 'mobberies' - are very lucrative and very successful for them," Claxton said. The issue gained more attention last weekend after thieves got away with roughly $300,000 in merchandise after a "flash rob" at a Nordstrom ( JWN) in California. Claxton warned that thieves are "becoming more violent, more aggressive, more frequent with more people." Hong/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)Īnd "successful outcomes for the thieves" are only making matters worse, Marq Claxton, director of political affairs and public relations at the Black Law Enforcement Alliance and a former NYPD officer, told Yahoo Finance. 2, 2021, where a recent smash-and-grab robbery took place. A security guard, right, stands at the entrance to a Nordstrom department store at the Grove mall in Los Angeles, Thursday, Dec.
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