Is your Retail Store Appealing to Criminals?

What does a criminal think when he or she looks at your retail store? Unfortunately, this is a factor that you’ll need to consider. In addition to setting up your store to be appealing to customers and functional for staff, you’ll also need to ensure that it looks unappealing to criminals.

Criminals want easy robberies. They want to be able to get in and out of a property quickly. They want to be able to steal as many valuable items as they possibly can and they want to do so in a short period of time. For these reasons, criminals “scout” their victims and search for properties that will be the easiest and fastest to break into and the ones that will return the greatest value in stolen goods. Your goal is to ensure that your business isn’t one of these properties.

How can you protect yourself? By knowing what criminals look for and by taking action to make your retail store look less appealing to criminals.

Criminals Look for Properties with Weaknesses

Does your back door not lock properly? Is there a dark alley beside your store? Do you have several potted plants in front of your windows? These are all security weaknesses that criminals look for. A door that doesn’t lock correctly is an open invitation for a criminal. A dark alley gives a criminal a place to hide. Potted plants not only make good hiding places, but they can also be used as weapons to break through windows.

Take a good look at your retail location and see if you can spot any weaknesses that a criminal could exploit. Then make sure that you take appropriate steps to eliminate those weaknesses and secure your retail store.

Criminals Target Properties without Adequate Security

As mentioned, a criminal wants to get in and out of a property as quickly as possible. They obviously do not want to get caught committing a crime either. For these reasons, they look for properties that do not have adequate security set ups. This means locations that do not have alarm systems, surveillance cameras or security gates.

For example, a property with security gates tells a criminal that it’s going to be much more difficult to break into that location. It’s also going to take significantly more time. Criminals do not want to deal with difficult or time-consuming break-ins. They fear getting caught in the act. For this reason, many criminals avoid properties that have security gates and other security tools installed. They’d rather spend their time breaking into a retail store that doesn’t give them as much hassle. We call these Smash and Grab break-ins.

Criminals Look for High Value Items that are Easy to Steal

Criminals want to steal the highest value items that they can get. They also want items that they can easily steal. This means that small, high-value items (such as cell phones, medications, perfumes and other similar items) are frequent targets. If your store sells these items, you’ll want to secure them. Placing them behind security gates or locking them in a secure cabinet will make them significantly more difficult to steal and decrease the likelihood of a criminal targeting your store.

Helpful tips on layering security, download our 10 Critical Points to Securing your Shop, your Employees, and your Goods eGuide.
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