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Frequently Asked Questions
Why not simply lock high-value stock in a cabinet?
Because locked stock sells substantially less - the customer who has to find staff to see a product often leaves without one.
Cabinets remove the ability to pick up, compare and read the packaging, which is a large part of how these decisions are made.
They also create a staffing dependency: no available assistant means no sale, particularly at busy times.
Merchandise protection devices are the compromise, keeping the product handleable while making removal difficult.
Cabinets still have a place for the highest value or most targeted lines, where the loss outweighs the conversion cost.
The decision is commercial as much as security: compare the shrinkage saved against the sales lost, rather than treating theft as the only variable.
Which device suits which product?
Safers for small boxed items, cable and alarm locks for powered display goods, locking hooks for pegged stock, anti-sweep fittings for small high-turnover items.
Safer cases suit razor blades, cosmetics, memory cards, medicines and anything small and boxed - the case is far harder to conceal than the product.
Cable locks suit phones, tablets, power tools and appliances that customers should be able to pick up and try.
Locking peg hooks suit anything hanging in quantity, where the whole hook could otherwise be emptied in one motion.
Anti-sweep fittings limit removal to one or two items at a time from a hook or a shelf.
The test is how the customer needs to interact with the product. A device that prevents the interaction that leads to a purchase costs more than it saves.
What does a merchandise protection programme cost to run?
The devices are a one-off asset; the recurring costs are till labour, lost and damaged devices, and the keys.
Safers and locks are reusable and should last years, so the unit cost is amortised over many cycles.
Till time is the largest ongoing cost: every protected item adds seconds to a transaction, multiplied across the day.
Devices are lost, broken and taken. A replacement rate needs budgeting, and a sudden rise in losses is itself a signal.
Alarm-equipped devices add batteries and charging to the maintenance load.
Standardising on fewer device types reduces all of these at once - fewer keys, fewer procedures, fewer spares and less training.
How should keys be controlled?
As controlled security items: counted, signed for, locked away overnight, and replaced as a set when one goes missing.
Stop lock keys, safer keys and detacher tools are small and portable, and one outside the store defeats every matching device in it.
Keys left on a till overnight or attached to a lanyard that goes home are the normal failure.
Reconcile the set at every handover and lock them away at close, exactly as cash keys are handled.
When a key is lost, the correct response is to change the lock set rather than to order a replacement key - which is expensive, and is why the count matters.
Suppliers offer keys coded per store or per chain. Keys coded to a single store contain the loss when one is taken.
Do these devices work with EAS?
They complement it - the device protects the item on the shelf, EAS detects it at the exit, and many devices build the EAS element into the device itself.
Safer cases are frequently available with an integrated label, so the case itself alarms at the door.
Spider wraps and cable tags for boxed goods often combine physical restraint with an EAS response and a local alarm if the cable is cut.
That layering is what makes the pairing effective: the item is hard to remove, and hard to get out of the store if it is.
Check technology compatibility. A device with a built-in EAS element must match the store's system to work.
It also affects the till process: some devices need both removing and deactivating, and the order matters.
How is till throughput protected?
By standardising the opening mechanism, positioning the tools where the operator already reaches, and training the removal as part of the scan.
Every protected item adds handling time. Four different mechanisms multiply it and add hesitation while the operator works out which tool to use.
Standardising on one or two systems across the store is the single biggest improvement available.
Tool position matters as much as tool speed - a key kept behind the operator costs more than a slightly slower one within reach.
Removed devices need somewhere to go, and a defined return routine, or they pile up at the till and disappear from the floor.
Measure it. Timing a protected transaction against an unprotected one gives the throughput cost, which is what the shrinkage saving has to beat.
Do alarmed display devices need much maintenance?
Yes - batteries, charging and false alarms are the ongoing load, and a device that has gone silent is a protection everyone still believes in.
Alarm modules on cable locks and display stands are battery-powered or mains-fed, and a flat battery disables the protection invisibly.
Powered display goods that charge through the security cable add another failure mode: a device that stops charging leaves the demonstration stock dead.
An alarm that keeps sounding for nothing on the shop floor erodes staff response just as the door alarms do.
A daily or weekly check of alarmed positions, with a log, catches failures before they matter.
Track failures by device type. A model that fails repeatedly is worth replacing rather than maintaining.