As the shoplifting epidemic continues, highlighted by last night’s ITV1 programme ‘Shoplifting: The Battle On The High Street’, (19 October), Greg Rose, co-owner of Maybugs, which has stores in Bexhill on Sea, Eastbourne and Hailsham, explains how he and co-owner John Dale set out to deter would-be thieves by exposing them on social media.
“Shoplifting has sadly become part of the daily routine which we have to deal with,” admits Greg Rose, co-founder of three Maybugs gift stores in East Sussex, recently selected as one of the #SmallBiz100 most inspirational small business in the UK. “We report every incident of shoplifting to the police but, as yet, we haven’t had one visit from them. It’s a sad fact that the police don’t seem to care, or are so busy with other crimes that shoplifting has been accepted by them.”
Continues Greg: “If we have absolute proof that something has been taken, we post a picture on our socials from our CCTV footage as we did at 5pm yesterday – see below – saying something along the lines of: ‘this person loved our products so much they forgot to pay’, and that once the item is returned or paid for, we will remove the post. In this particular instance, the lady contacted me, paying at 9pm, which was a result within four hours.”
Continues Greg: “In 95% of incidents we have had success in the item being paid for or returned. We even had someone’s boss phone up and pay as they were so ashamed. We can’t do it for every incident, as our socials would be full of negative posts, but it does seem that people are more afraid of being publicly shamed on social media, and all their family and friends knowing, than they are of the police!”
As ITV’s ‘Shoplifting: The Battle On the High Street’ underlined, shoplifting has more than doubled in the past three years and is costing retailers just under £1bn a year. But good news for retailers is that AI face recognition technology isnow able to capture the faces of potential shoplifters across the UK.
Top: Shoplifting is on the rise.
