Shoplifters and Shopping carts

The obvious answer is yes, especially in the grocery field.  More retailers are offering reusable bags that are replacing carts for some. For home improvement stores and big box grocery stores like Costco they are here to stay.  Unfortunately, shopping carts contribute to accidents as children often fall out of them and shoplifters use them to assist them in shoplifting.  Unless you have worked in the retail field, many folks are unaware of the cost to a retailer to maintain a sufficient supply of carts.  Often you see them miles from the store and are taken for numerous purposes, resulting in high replacement costs.  Costs are not the only issue as customer service can be impacted if the retailer does not maintain a sufficient supply on hand  for the customers.

There is a company that has excellent products to help a retailer combat these issues.  It is called Carttronics and they are based in San Diego, CA.  One product limits the area a cart can be rolled and if it starts to exceeds that area, one of the wheels locks up.  This prevents the cart from leaving the parking lot.  A simple remote control unlocks it so it can be reused for customers. Another product impacts the use of carts by shoplifters.  Often a bold shoplifter will fill up a cart full of merchandise and just walk out the door.  More creative ones will have an "unrelated" receipt in their hand to give the impression the product was paid for. This type of theft is covered in my training at http://www.lpdetective.com/.  Carttronics's system requires the cart to go thru a register lane and if it does not, when it gets to the front door, it locks up preventing it from rolling out.  You can only imagine the video of a shoplifter that has a cart full of merchandise that is moving towards the exit door quickly and the cart locks up forcing the shoplifter to almost fly over the handle bar.

Simple concepts with quality products make excellent tools to combat shopping cart issues...

Enjoy the day...