As the retail landscape grows increasingly competitive, more companies are consolidating in an effort to grab a larger market share and sell more products at a lower price. As a result, loss prevention professionals are now managing hundreds of locations across the nation and beyond with limited resources.
It’s a challenging scenario during the best of times, but even more so as stores grapple with increasing shrinkage, shoplifting, and violent crime. LP Magazine spoke with several experts about how they’re navigating this difficult terrain and driving results in multiple locations where there is rarely regular face-to-face interaction.
Teamwork and Connections
Many industry experts say that perhaps the most important strategy in managing multiple locations is ensuring that you have a strong team in place that can act as your company’s loss prevention conduit and connect with retail locations in a meaningful way.
David Shugan is a seasoned executive who has been in the loss prevention industry for some thirty years. In January, he started a new position as vice president of strategic initiatives for RetSci, a business management consultancy.
Previously, he served as senior director of loss prevention for nearly sixteen years at Carter’s, an Atlanta-based children’s apparel retailer. Before that, he was manager of investigations at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. He said he spent many years during his career traveling around the country, visiting individual stores.
“It’s all about building relationships,” said Shugan, who, during his time at Carter’s, managed multiple regional managers, each of whom oversaw upwards of 200 retail locations.
“Whatever problem you’re trying to solve, if you can get buy-in from store leaders and work together as a team, it helps make everyone’s job easier and more effective,” he said. “Walk in with open arms and an open mind and make it clear you’re there to help.”
Shugan said that critical to making these key connections is approaching the situation with a “macro-management mindset” to gain a clear understanding of it. For instance, if a store is grappling with high shrinkage, Shugan’s team members communicate with the store associates to fully break down the situation—like what departments are seeing the most theft and when—and get everyone on the same page.
“You’re trying to understand the problem,” he said. “And I’m always open to the store team members’ ideas. Now, we’re all working toward the same solution. This is a much better approach than walking into a store and saying, ‘Hey, you have $50,000 in shrink. This is unacceptable, and here’s how you’re going to fix it.’”
Cary Jones is vice president of loss prevention, administration, and compliance at VSP Vision, part of VSP Global. The company operates more than 1,000 retail locations, the largest of which is Visionworks.
Jones said that since VSP Global has optometry practices with retail dispensaries spread across multiple models, the company tries to concentrate on understanding its target internal customers and keeping it simple for them.
Before moving to the parent company, Jones was assigned to Visionworks, which has been involved in VSP’s loss prevention procedures for several years. This meant more visibility and interaction with the business, which allowed the Visionworks LP team to communicate quickly with the operation’s multi-unit leaders, he explained. Compare that to Optical Outlets, which was acquired last year. The team assigned to that part of the business spent time identifying a very different internal customer. They considered multiple factors, such as prior exposure to loss prevention and the different point of sale and merchandising systems used to mitigate loss.
“While Visionworks is established and the communication can flow centrally out, the Optical Outlets team had to identify the target customer and loss differently, working from the ground up to include both the multi-unit level and individual practice leaders,” Jones said. “This required more of an individual communication strategy.”
Developing effective communication strategies with team members is particularly important for Marty Andrews, vice president of loss prevention at VF Corp., an apparel and footwear company that owns brands like Vans, The North Face, and Timberland. He leads all loss prevention functions for about 800 retail stores in the US, Mexico, and Canada. To manage such an expansive footprint, Andrews has nine team members strategically placed in areas with clusters of stores, usually with easy access to a major airport.
He works with his team and business partners to conduct store inventories twice a year. VF Corp. uses those results to create strategies and action plans to reduce theft. Andrews said he typically touches base with his team members every Monday to get an update on the previous week and what’s planned for the current week.
“It gives me an opportunity to gauge where they’re at and determine if they have too many irons in the fire. It’s also a kind of mental health check-in to see how everyone is doing. I feel like that’s a super important part of my job.”
Individual team members support whatever brands and stores are in their territory. Retail locations can connect with VF Corp.’s loss prevention representatives directly via phone or email if there’s an emergency, like a robbery or violent encounter, or use a web-based portal to enter and track information for less crucial matters.
“I’m going to keep my team members as close to home as I can, preferably in the same time zone, which helps prevent too many long flights and burnout,” Andrews said. Moreover, Andrews said it’s important to have team members represent parts of the country where they feel most connected.
“I’m a West Coast guy,” he said. “I love New York, but I am a fish out of water there. But someone on my team from New York can interact with the store teams there about what’s going on in the city, the subway, and the schools. The store team members are our eyes and ears in each location, so it’s an important component of the loss prevention program to be able to make those connections.”
Challenges and Disruptions
Most industry experts agree that managing multiple locations from afar has gotten far more challenging since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a disruptive ripple effect throughout the retail industry.
“Everyone is aware of the issues out there, but there were some key learnings for us,” said Jones with VSP Global.
This included utilizing remote audits in lower-risk locations, which also helped reduce travel costs. Visionworks also began outfitting stores with big-screen TV monitors with remote meeting capabilities so both operators and regional loss prevention managers could visit and train in that location from afar.
“This meant we could spend more time concentrating on higher loss locations while still maintaining contact with the others,” Jones said.
As more loss prevention professionals oversee multiple locations in an increasingly volatile retail climate, Jones said it’s critical to understand your customer and have a simple message to convey to everyone in the field. This is especially true when a loss prevention manager tries to maintain relationships as he or she moves from overseeing a single big box store or district to managing an entire region.
“What made them successful before may have been one-on-one communication with a manager or group of store employees, and when they suddenly have over 1,000 employees spread over 100 locations, they can’t communicate in the style they did before,” Jones said. “Instead of concentrating on multi-unit leaders and high shrink or high-risk stores, they burn out by trying to be everywhere all the time.”
Andrews with VF Corp. said the “whole retail infrastructure is kind of broken right now,” from the magnitude and frequency of theft to the lack of response from law enforcement.
“These are definitely challenges that keep me up at night.”
In response, VF Corp. is using more third‑party security services. “Obviously, from a business standpoint, that cuts into profits, but it’s become a necessity at some of our locations.”
In recent years, VF Corp.’s priorities have shifted from investigating large external and internal cases to responding to more high-risk incidents. This new direction is complicated by ongoing challenges with retail workers, with some employees frustrated that they’re not allowed to physically stop shoplifters while others don’t care one way or another.
“We want to keep them somewhere in the middle of those two pillars,” Andrews said. “And we try to do that through coaching, leading, and influencing. It’s a partnership. We work for the stores. We’re there to serve and support them. They’re the ones running transactions and taking in money day in and day out.”
When overseeing multiple locations, Andrews stresses that one must recognize that one can’t be everywhere at once, and strategic time management is critical.
“Prioritization is key,” he said. “And you have to learn to influence store teams because we’re usually not there in person, and they don’t report to us directly. Get creative on how you do things from a distance. What can you accomplish over the phone or on video? Leverage those tools and learn when good is good enough. Not everything has to be perfect.”
Like Andrews, Shugan, in recent years, has also encountered mounting challenges when it comes to managing retail workers. With the high turnover rate, he said workers are often stretched thin, having to juggle multiple responsibilities, making it hard to focus on loss prevention measures. Moreover, it’s difficult to maintain consistent training when a set of workers might be employed at a store one month, but then the next month it’s a whole new group of employees.
“Companies are struggling to keep employees long-term and maintain morale,” Shugan said. “And with the economy, companies may only have one or two employees working at a time, which makes it hard to educate, train, and give feedback because they’re also receiving inventory, ringing up customers, and filling the floor with products. Unfortunately, many stores today just don’t have the manpower they used to have a few years ago.”
In addition to shrinkage and theft, Shugan said a growing concern when managing multiple locations is the rise in violent and threatening in-store encounters—a troubling trend that is demanding more of his time.
“We spend a lot of time talking about personal safety, customer safety, and store safety,” he said. “I want to control shrink, but at the end of the day, I’m most worried about the safety of our employees.”
Looking Forward
Given the volatile retail landscape and the uncertainty many have about the industry’s future, loss prevention experts stress that creativity and embracing change are paramount to success.
“I think core tenants like caring for your people and protecting assets will continue, but how we do them will continue to evolve,” said Jones with VSP Global. In addition to embracing virtual meetings, Jones said VSP Global is maximizing its current technology rather than adding new bells and whistles. For example, VSP has a Global Security Operations Center that is adding retail monitoring and loss prevention review functions.
“I do think there could be AI applications for us in the future, but for now we have been concentrating on aligning what we have.”
Andrews agrees that the retail industry is experiencing unprecedented changes and challenges, and it will take collaboration and trust to get through this rough spot.
“I hate to say it, but I’ve never seen things this bad. The loss prevention industry has to take steps now, including forging partnerships with district attorneys and police. We need to break down barriers and get people to understand the magnitude of the problems that are out there. For things to truly change, we need better policing, first and foremost. That’s a good step in the right direction.”