The Bunker Blog

When money is tight, a couple of things happen in regard to retail shrink. First, there is usually an increase in theft related activity, both external shoplifting and employee theft. People feel like they are making less these days. This is due to increasing costs and prices, and many companies are cutting unnecessary spending in order to offset some of the expenses. When people feel like their money is not going far enough, they sometimes make poor choices in order to maintain the lifestyle they’ve grown accustomed to. Employees are not immune to this effect, either. In fact, employee theft will increase at the same rate as shoplifting, if not more.

Next, retail sales often suffer because people have to offset their own expenses, like increased gas, food, and utility prices. So, they spend less on non-essentials in order to be able to pay for the “must have” things like food, electicity, etc.

Either of these situations affects shrink. If theft increases, that means more dollars lost. Since shrink is a percentage of sales, when sales are down, the same amount of shrink will mean a higher percentage over a period when sales are up.

Imagine what happens when both are combined. Higher shrink dollars combined with lower sales can significantly impact shrink numbers, causing big swings from last year to this. That is why it is so important to protect your company against losses, while maximizing every sale. It’s a tough balancing act, to be sure. The net result of failure is higher shrink and reduced profits. The reward of success is increased profits even though sales may be softer than normal.

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Well,  I have been traveling a good bit lately, and have been very busy with meetings, training, and yes, investigations. So, the blog has had to take a back seat for a bit while I attend to my obligations to my company. Things will be normalizing soon, and I’ll be back to the regular posting schedule. Thanks for being patient with me.

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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of traveling. From routine visits to formal meetings to investigations, I’ve been putting on the miles. This “off-time” from keeping up with this blog gave me the opportunity to think about and identify my goal for this site. I want to approach it the same way I approach my training. I want to keep it REAL.

Relavant: I want to speak to my audience, not in LP terminology, but in real dollars and sense. I want my content to be relevant to their situation. That’s tough when you are just learning who your audience is, but by producing what I hope is quality content that is easily understood and applied in practice, I want to keep the blog relevant to all who read it.

Educational: One of my main goals is that my readers learn something new every time they visit. My goal is to help retailers save money and add to their profit line by reducing losses through shrink. Education is awareness. Awareness is the first line of defense against shrink.

Attitude: I like to add a little of my own attitude to my posts. That is why I post commentaries on current news articles that are related to shoplifting, employee theft, and shrink reduction principles in general. I always like to make sure a little bit of me comes out in every post. I also believe it is important to have the attitude of a winner if you expect to win.

Long Lasting: Although some of the articles posted here are very temporary in that they deal with current events and news related to theft, I do make every attempt to make each and every article memorable. I try to add my own experiences, successes and failures, to the mix so that the point made is memorable to the reader. I have posts from very early on that are still regularly visited, read, and commented on. That, I believe, counts as long-lasting content. As technology, trends, and programs change, so will this blog, but the core principles will remain.

So, my goal for my little piece of blogosphere real estate is to just always keep it REAL. If I can accomplish that, I can build on it to make the site a success.

So, what do you think? Is this blog REAL to you?

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I passed on a commentary about actress Bai Ling. I just felt that there were plenty of stories and opinions out there on this story. Then I found this story about a former bank vice president who embezzled over $500k from 2 banks of which he was an officer over a period of 5 years.

Michael Dean Miller pulled down a salary between $87,000.00 and $100,000.00 per year during this time, and yet he was stealing money by depositing internal bank funds into his own accounts.

As I have said before, theft is not about need, it’s about greed.

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I wasn’t sure if I should even respond to this comment left by a reader recently. But I did. Shame on me if I let my emotions get away with me for a minute, but I’m not sorry. You can find the original post here.

Here’s the comment:

mik // Feb 10, 2008 at 3:43 pm

sounds like you think you’re somehow above these people because you wouldn’t do that. do you know everything about their situation? you would do exactly the same in their position, I can assure you. I have seen people do things they would never have even considered when circumstances turn against them. And almost always the cause is laws which are designed to protect people who have enough money to not worry about such trivial matters as whats right and wrong, but punish those who do not have the resources to comply.

And here is my reply:

Thanks for the comment, mik.
Let me respond by saying you make some assumptions about me which are false. First, I have been at the bottom, and I never resorted to theft as a means to get by. Second, I have 2 kids, and they are the most important people in my life. I would never, ever, put them in harm’s way like this. No matter the circumstances, I wouldn’t risk the safety or wellbeing of my kids. Even if I did feel like stealing was the only way to survive, I would NOT expose my kids to it, and I would NEVER leave one of them behind just to save myself.
Finally, my experience tells me that 99% of the time, it is not necessity that drives thieves to steal, but greed. So I may not know everything about their situation, but the statistics are in my favor. They were probably stealing because they thought the reward outweighed the consequence.

Anybody want to weigh in?

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