Comprehensive Look at ORC Impacts & Strategies
Alleviating the Financial and Operational Impacts of ORC
Organized retail crime (ORC) is no longer just a loss prevention issue — it’s a multibillion-dollar crisis affecting consumers, communities, and entire retail organizations. ORC poses a severe financial burden on businesses, directly affecting profitability and operational efficiency. During earnings calls, major retailers such as Target, Walgreens, and Walmart have openly cited ORC as a primary driver of increased shrinkage. Beyond financial losses, ORC threatens employees' safety, drives workforce turnover, and undermines customer trust. To mitigate ORC’s far-reaching impact, retailers must implement new strategies to protect their businesses and ensure a safer shopping environment.

Applying the Lens of Total Retail Loss

Shrinkage is a key component of total retail loss (TRL), described in a report commissioned by the RILA Asset Protection Leaders Council in partnership with Professor Adrian Beck from the University of Leicester in the UK. TRL encompasses all factors that reduce a retailer's profitability, including theft, fraud, administrative errors, and waste/damages.

Retail loss refers to the overall financial impact of missing or devalued inventory, whether due to external theft (shoplifting, ORC), internal theft (employee fraud), operational mistakes (wrong shipment, wrong locations, wrong demand), or vendor discrepancies (shipped less than ordered/billed). Shrinkage specifically measures the difference between recorded inventory and actual stock at good condition levels, making it a crucial metric for retailers to monitor and mitigate.

Operational Impact

ORC disrupts supply chain operations by increasing cargo theft, raising security costs, delaying inventory replenishment — all of which drive up prices for retailers and consumers. Verisk CargoNet reported record-breaking cargo theft activity across the U.S and Canada in 2024, with 3,625 reported incidents representing a stark 27 percent increase from 2023. The estimated average value per theft rose to $202,364, up from $187,895 in 2023.

Employee and Consumer Safety

Rising incidents of theft have contributed to employee turnover, as frontline workers face increased risks and workplace stress. A 2023 survey of 1,000 retail employees showed that 40 percent of employees feel scared to go to work due to increased theft incidents. Increased theft disrupts store operations, pulling staff away from customer service roles to address security concerns. As a result, the overall shopping experience declines, negatively impacting customer loyalty.

Developing Retailer-Driven Strategies: mytotalretail.com
 

Retail Threats Continue to Evolve
How experts navigate retail’s key threats

The future of retail protection comes together at NRF PROTECT

By David Johnston - VP, Asset Protection & Retail Operations, NRF

Retailers today face a dynamic landscape of increasing threats and areas of loss that can significantly impact their operations, brand reputation and profitability. Recognizing that this broad scope of risks, threats and loss can transcend across the physical, cyber and digital realms, retailers today must collaborate with peers — within their department, cross-functionally within their organization and throughout the industry for a wider perspective.

Asset protection professionals continue to focus on rising theft due to shoplifting and organized retail crime. Theft events, along with active threats and acts of violence, have escalated the need to maintain a viable threat assessment and workplace violence prevention program across retail and non-retail environments. Internal theft remains a significant issue, as does recognizing how shrink and loss can occur across one’s organizational landscape.

Cyber and digital crimes have become more prevalent in theft of goods. Strategic cargo theft sees product “disappearing” enroute as thieves pose as legitimate brokers after crafting false personas or stealing identities of legitimate companies. Digital thieves ideate new scams that result in gift card fraud or steal gift cards to initiate nationwide and transnational gift card draining.

Retailers are increasingly targeted by ransomware, leading to significant disruption, financial loss and damaged reputations. Phishing emails and cyberattacks have retailers not only monitoring their own networks but constantly aware of third-party attacks from their vendor partners.

The risk and threat landscape has and will continue to evolve. Those responsible for the protection of their organization must understand that security is no longer the responsibility of a single person, department or function. It requires an enterprise-wide responsibility with multiple partners leading different aspects of risk coming together to build the structure of an organization’s enterprise security risk management. nrf.com


Invisible Barcodes Help Walmart Fight Shoplifting
Walmart uses a hidden trick to catch shoplifting and ‘skip scanning’ — here’s how
Walmart shoppers are losing their minds after learning that the store’s budget-friendly Great Value items come equipped with invisible barcodes — a secret hiding in plain sight since 2019.

In a viral TikTok clip posted by Walmart worker @beatsbycait, the employee used a handheld scanner to zap six products right in their middles — far from the obvious barcodes — revealing that the goods are plastered with covert codes.

“Real ones know almost all great value items have hidden bar codes,” she wrote in the caption, sending jaws to the self-checkout floor. The clip has racked up over 287,000 views and left viewers stunned — and slightly paranoid.

How it works is that bar codes are hidden so self-checkout scanners can recognize products even when customers aren’t aiming directly at the traditional barcode — making theft harder, since traditionally it’s easy for people to skip scanning at item at self-checkout registers.

The tech was developed by barcode company Digimarc and has been around for five years.

“Walmart is a forward-thinking technology leader with an unwavering focus on customer experience,” Digimarc CEO Riley McCormack said in a statement in 2022. “We are thrilled to expand our partnership with them and look forward to sharing more details about this expansion in the coming months.”  tech.yahoo.com


Americans Aren't Buy the Positive Crime Data
Something remarkable is happening with violent crime rates in the US

Americans remained scared of violent crime. The numbers tell a different story.

In the first full year of the pandemic, the FBI tallied 22,134 murders nationwide, up from 16,669 in 2019 — an increase of roughly 34 percent, the sharpest one-year rise in modern crime record-keeping. In 2021, Philadelphia alone recorded a record 562 homicides, while Baltimore experienced a near-record 337 murders. Between 2019 and 2020, the average number of weekly emergency department visits for gunshots increased by 37 percent, and largely stayed high through the following year.

By the 2024 election, for the first time in awhile, violent crime was a major political issue in the US. A Pew survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans believed crime should be a top priority for the president and Congress, up from 47 percent in 2021.

And yet even as the presidential campaign was unfolding, the violent crime spike of the pandemic had already subsided — and crime rates have kept dropping. The FBI’s 2023 crime report found that murder was down nearly 12 percent year over year, and in 2024 it kept falling to roughly 16,700 murders, on par with pre-pandemic levels. The early numbers for 2025 are so promising that Jeff Asher, one of the best independent analysts on crime, recently asked in a piece whether this year could have the lowest murder rate in US history.

All of which raises two questions: What’s driving a decrease in crime every bit as sharp as the pandemic-era increase? And why do so many of us find it so hard to believe?   vox.com


Chicago violence down over Memorial Day weekend, according to police data

Chicago homicides in 2025: 148 people slain. How that compares with previous years.
 

How Will Trump's Policies Impact Workplace Safety?
What Impact Will Trump 2.0 Have on Workplace Safety?

The EHS community weighs in on the good, the bad and the ugly possibilities of deregulating the workplace.

Journalists, no matter what you might think or might have heard, really don’t have all the answers… but we sure have a lot of questions. We find out what’s going on out there in the real world, and we ask people in the know why it’s happening, and then—especially for those of us in the business media—we ask what it all means for our readers.

Lately, there has been a LOT of news about the Trump administration’s regulatory (or should that be deregulatory?) actions as they affect workplace safety. Of course, all news is subject to interpretation, depending on the agendas of the media sources reporting it, and it’s not always clear as to whether a specific action will benefit or hurt the promotion of occupational health and safety… or maybe it won’t have any impact at all, which is another distinct possibility.

Rather than picking sides, we did what we do best: We asked safety professionals what they thought. In a recent online poll that we sent out this past spring, we asked our readers a couple pulse-taking questions to get a better idea as to how the EHS community was reacting to the safety-oriented actions coming out of Washington. We heard from over 800 readers, and many of them took us up on the chance to also add their own comments after answering the quiz questions. For the record, here’s how the polling results went:

Do you think the Trump Administration will have a positive effect on OSHA?

- 56% said No, 31% said Yes, and 13% said Don’t Know.

Do you think the Trump Administration will have a positive effect on EPA?

- 61% said No, 29% said Yes, and 10% said Don’t Know.

Do you think the Trump Administration will have a positive effect on workplace safety overall?

- 60% said No, 28% said Yes, and 12% said Don’t Know. ehstoday.com


Sigh of Relief for Tariff-Wary Retailers?
Federal court blocks Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs under emergency powers law
A federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law, swiftly throwing into doubt Trump’s signature set of economic policies that have rattled global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised broader fears about inflation intensifying and the economy slumping.

The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority and left the country’s trade policy dependent on his whims.

Trump has repeatedly said the tariffs would force manufacturers to bring back factory jobs to the U.S. and generate enough revenue to reduce federal budget deficits. He used the tariffs as a negotiating cudgel in hopes of forcing other nations to negotiate agreements that favored the U.S., suggesting he would simply set the rates himself if the terms were unsatisfactory.

What remains unclear is whether the White House will respond to the ruling by pausing all of its emergency power tariffs in the interim.

The ruling amounted to a categorical rejection of the legal underpinnings of some of Trump’s signature and most controversial actions of his four-month-old second term. The ruling faces certain appeal — and the Supreme Court will almost certainly be called upon to lend a final answer — but it casts a sharp blow. apnews.com

   RELATED: Federal Judges Crush Trump’s Tariffs With Brutal Ruling


90% of Hudson's Bay Workers Laid Off
Hudson’s Bay to lay off more than 9K employees by mid-June

The move affects about 90% of the workforce, with just over 100 people staying on to help the iconic Canadian department store wind down.

Hudson’s Bay in recent weeks has managed to sell its intellectual property to retailer Canadian Tire, which also bid on several of its leases, for $21 million. Then about two dozen store leases went to a commercial real estate developer for an undisclosed amount. But as it shutters its entire fleet, more than 9,000 of its employees will be out of work by June 15, according to court documents.

The iconic Canadian department store, which also ran Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th in the country, filed for the equivalent of bankruptcy in March. At that point Hudson’s Bay employed about 9,364 people across 96 stores, four distribution centers and its headquarters, with seven employees living in the U.S.

By June 1, the company will have laid off about 8,347 of its employees, or about 90% of its workforce, plus another 900 or so two weeks later when its distribution centers are expected to close. retaildive.com


E.l.f. Cosmetics to raise prices by $1 in response to tariffs, inflation
The increases will go into effect on Aug. 1. “Not gonna lie, inflation and tariffs are hitting us hard,” the company said on an Instagram post.

CVS Closing 270 Stores Nationwide: List of Locations Impacted

Macy’s sees opportunity to take share as tariffs roil pricing