River Island is one of the leading names in UK high street shopping.
Known for their stylish and affordable clothing, they pride themselves on being “the perfect store to pick up everything you need for a brand new head-to-toe look.” Each store stocks a wide range of items in many styles to suit an array of tastes.
It’s therefore no surprise that, with so much variety in-store, retail loss prevention is a key issue for the business.
According to the British Retail Consortium, customer theft accounted for £438 million of the direct cost of UK retail crime in 2016. Clothing is one of the most common targets for thieves, with magnetic releasers used in-store becoming more and more prevalent on the black market.
In early 2016 River Island turned to the Concept Tag to help reduce retail losses caused through theft.
The Concept Tag is a revolutionary EAS tagging device created by Agon Systems that has been proven to reduce illicit tag removal and deter criminals.
Over seven years of development produced a unique locking mechanism within the Concept Tag that is practically impossible to remove the tag by force.
Tests have shown it would need over 50 kilograms of pressure applied to force the tag off of a garment – meaning it would likely cause damage to the garment or shoplifter if attempted.
60% Reduction in Theft
River Island installed the Concept Tag in four stores in April 2016.
This included its three stores stationed on London’s Oxford Street – Europe’s most popular street for shopping with over 500,000 shoppers visiting daily – and a fourth store located in Rotterdam’s busy Lijnbaan shopping district.
60,000 tags were sent to each of the four stores.
Early statistics are being finalised, but in the Marble Arch Park House store alone (their biggest location) theft has been reduced by 60 per cent on articles of clothing the Concept Tag was used upon.