Sephora (LVMUY) -) is fighting back in the war against retail theft. The beauty retail giant has decided to remove all of its fragrances from its shelves and replace them with tester bottles where customers can instead sample scents.
If a customer wants to buy the actual fragrance, they will have to alert a staff member to retrieve it for them as opposed to reaching for the unopened box of the fragrance on the shelf themselves, which they were allowed to do in the past.
The store said that fragrances are among the list of top stolen items from its stores, according to CNN. The company also revealed that it began to beef up on “loss prevention investigators” to roam its stores to help combat retail theft.
Related: Target CEO has surprising words on retail theft
“The safety and security of our employees and customers is our top priority,” Sephora said in a statement to CNN. “To minimize the threats of retail theft and to provide our shoppers with the peace of mind during their experience at Sephora, we’ve increased the presence of Sephora loss prevention investigators across all stores. With that, out of an abundance of caution, Sephora only displays fragrance testers in-stores.”
Retail theft has been on the rise nationwide, and retailers are taking drastic measures to combat the trend that resulted in industry losses of roughly $112 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
For example, stores such as Kroger and Woolworths have tested the use of artificial intelligence in their self-checkout systems (often the source of many shoplifting instances) which use cameras to catch and alert customers who scan items incorrectly.
Walmart has resorted to removing some of its self-checkout machines from its stores, while Costco has beefed up staff oversight in self-checkout areas. Target even closed nine of its stores across four different states last month due to retail theft, citing that shoplifting was posing a risk to the safety of its employees.
It seems like Sephora has taken a page out of CVS and Walgreens’ book as both pharmacies have also increased the amount of items that are under lock and key in their stores in order to tackle shoplifting.
Retailers locking up items from customers can be beneficial for curbing retail theft, but it can also have unintended consequences.
A survey from The Harris Poll and Verkada, which questions over 2,000 adults in the U.S., found that 71% of shoppers are less likely to make purchases at stores that have anti-theft measures put in place such as locked cabinets or shelves, security guards, gated exits and checkout lanes and limited operating hours.
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