EAS Tags — Moving Beyond Apparel
By Bob Johns, associate editor
Tyco Retail Solutions has been helping retailers deal with shrink for years, and Sensormatic has been its flagship product. Unfortunately the Sensormatic products worked well with garments and fabric accessories, but it did not offer a solution for hard goods and accessories. So, when Tyco’s customers began commenting that they would really love to have one vendor to work with for all EAS solutions, the company took notice. In today’s competitive market, if you can’t offer everything a retailer needs in a solution, you are opening the door for a competitor to get its foot in.
Craig Szklany, Tyco director of product development, notes, “When we looked at specialty items that have high value and difficult materials to tag, we realized Tyco did not offer a cost-effective solution for our customers. That is why we came up with the new wrap tags.” Unlike many tags currently on the market, the new Sensormatic tags come in three sizes to fit most sizes of merchandise. Additionally, the small footprint of the device module allows for the package marketing to be much more visible. Not only is this important to the product manufacturers, who spend millions of dollars each year to create inviting package marketing, but it also allows the retailer to properly merchandise the product on the shelves. This solution eliminates the need for the “empty box” placement in front of the product.
New Tags = New Markets
Szklany comments, “This new product has opened up entirely new markets for us. Take sporting goods for instance. Now we can tag bats, golf clubs, or any number of high dollar-value items.” Where the company may have been restricted to the apparel section in a sports store before, the entire store is open to Tyco now. This eliminates the need for a retailer to deal with multiple EAS vendors in the same locations. A lot of these smaller volume specialty retail stores were not even on Tyco’s radar several years ago, but with the new tags in place, almost any type of retailer is fair game.
There are tags which work well for jewelry, fashion accessories, sporting goods, electronics, and footwear, not to mention the traditional garment tags. Each tag is specifically designed to protect a certain type of merchandise, whether it be a software box or a diamond necklace.
With enhanced EAS, many tags are designed to combat ORC shoplifting by overcoming the use of techniques like signal jamming devices and foil lined booster bags. To further discourage theft, some tags are equipped with their own sound emitters. These tags are equipped with 3 tone devices that will set off an alarm if tampered with or taken out of the exit. Additionally, the tag itself emits an audible alarm in the event of a theft. “Normally this will cause the perpetrator to drop the items and allow for a full recovery by store personnel,” Szklany says. This avoids the need for store personnel to confront a suspected shoplifter. The thieves won’t stick around with alarms going off both at the exit and from the booster bag.
“The ultimate goal is to strike a balance between discouraging retail theft and still keeping the product on the floor for the customer,” Szklany comments. The items need to be secure, while still allowing the customer to touch, hold, and feel the merchandise. With the addition of the new Sensormatic tags, Tyco is positioning itself to compete in all retail verticals, not just apparel.