h.h. gregg Challenges The Loss Prevention Philosophy

March 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Bob Johns, associate editor

LP sometimes has an adversarial relationship with store personnel. This electronics retailer has succeeded in creating a mutually beneficial partnership.

It is not often that someone has the chance to build an LP department from the ground up for a major U.S. retailer, but that is exactly the opportunity afforded to Todd Zimmerman, national asset protection manager at h.h. gregg. When Zimmerman came to the national electronics retailer in 2004, the company consisted of 55 stores and had no LP team. The company had an audit team which accounted for inventory, but no best practices or procedures were in place for what to do when irregularities in counts arose.

Since that time, h.h. gregg has grown to more than 220 stores and $2.5 billion in annual revenue and is currently growing at roughly 15 to 20 stores per year. Zimmerman began his career as a store detective at Lazarus department stores straight out of college and stayed with them as the company was acquired by Federated Department Stores and became Macy’s. It was there he was approached by then h.h. gregg President Dennis May about starting the LP team at his company. Zimmerman was excited about the possibility of molding his own department, but he wanted it to be different from other LP departments. “I didn’t want the LP department to be viewed as just the company police; I wanted us to be partnered with every department within the company and really thrive on those partnerships,” Zimmerman says. When the department started, he was the only LP person for all 55 stores. Today, his department consists of 18 team members across the store network.