Gateway to Solutions

At NRF, we constantly strive to stay ahead of the curve, and my team and I are focused more than ever on bringing added value to the industry and your organization. Our recently-announced partnership with eBay to fight organized retail crime (see "A Bid For Cooperation" in this issue) perfectly illustrates that approach, and we’ve applied that vision to our conferences, as well.

Nowhere else will you find such an all-star lineup of retailers and law enforcement officers discussing the good, the bad and the ugly of retail loss prevention. The conference agenda includes great roundtable and panel discussions, interactive workshops, dynamic industry sessions and exciting keynotes from C-level retail executives and other influential industry leaders.

This show is developed by and for the retail loss prevention community. Members of NRF’s Loss Prevention Advisory Council and our newly created Conference Planning Committee played a large role in putting this event together. In recognition of the importance of fostering and maintaining solid relationships with law enforcement, NRF’s Fusion Center will be open for two days – doubling the opportunity to network with local, state and federal law enforcement representatives.

We realize that for LP professionals, there really is no such thing as down time. Still, we hope that this conference serves as a gateway to solutions and contacts in your fight against retail crime and loss.

Rhett Asher, NRF Vice President of Loss Prevention

A variety of sessions at the NRF Loss Prevention Conference & Expo 2010 are designed to introduce LP professionals to the latest techniques and tools for fighting fraud and combating shrink. Here’s a preview of several of the high-profile sessions at the conference, whose theme is “Protecting Your Profits.”

How are crooks beating retailers’ returns systems? Are they switching product containers and prices, picking up used receipts in the parking lot, taking the listed merchandise from the shelf and claiming a refund – or are they using a new scam that hasn’t made it to your region yet?

Hear real-life return fraud examples that will help prepare your LP team in a session titled “You’ve Been Had: How You Are Being Compromised by Return Fraud, and New Ideas to Stop the Loss.”

Bob Walters, vice president of sales and marketing for The Retail Equation, will update NRF’s annual Retail Fraud Survey with findings from the first half of 2010 and will be joined by retailers who use his company’s return fraud solution to discuss trends they are seeing. Along with examples from their own stores, these retailers will discuss the latest techniques scammers are using to bypass store rules and policies, as well as changes made in the retailers’ own infrastructure to eliminate these frauds.

Retail LP departments often find themselves isolated, without the support and awareness of associates, but increasing company-wide knowledge of loss prevention can reduce shrinkage and fraud.

How can your team encourage ownership of LP at all levels? What method of delivery best meets your company’s needs? Chris Canoles, senior director of environmental health and safety for The Home Depot, uses an online training tool called the InFocus Toolbelt because “it allows us to better control the training message that store associates receive and it gives us visibility into participation.” In a session titled “Asset Protection Awareness: Two Strategies to Engage Your Associate Base,” he will detail how the home improvement chain’s web-based program works and the results it has achieved.

Meanwhile, The Talbots takes a more traditional approach to LP awareness: It uses no security tags or cameras in the chain’s more than 580 stores. Randy Warnke, regional LP manager for the high-end clothing retailer, will relate a non-tech method of promoting awareness and customer service using posters and videos that has resulted in shrinkage figures that are “under the industry average for specialty apparel retail.”

How does the “C-Suite” view retail loss prevention teams and the job they do? What does the top tier of management want from LP — and what does it take to progress in your career within your company?

Kelly Gorman, vice president of loss prevention for PETCO Animal Supplies, returns to moderate a session titled “Loss Prevention from a C-Suite’s Point of View.”

“The average LP person is intimidated by the ‘leaders at the top’ who usually have no idea what LP does,” Gorman says. “We think it is a good idea to get them talking.”

Joining Gorman will be panelists Michael Archbold, executive vice president, COO and CFO of The Vitamin Shoppe; Michael Brizel, executive vice president and general counsel, Saks Fifth Avenue; and Marvin Ellison, executive vice president, U.S. stores, The Home Depot.

Wouldn’t it be nice to smile when you talk about what you do for a living?” is a question career coach Ken Kuznia often asks audiences. A long-time entrepreneur and president of a national recruiting firm, Kuznia spent nearly a decade coaching business professionals through monumental career moves, which led to his focus on career transformation.

In a general session titled “Advance Your Career: Bring More Value to Your Career and More Satisfaction to Your Life,” Kuznia will offer advice on getting more from your career — whether it’s recognition, advancement, fun or pay raises — by focusing more on satisfying the needs of your customer, company and boss.

“Although counterintuitive in today’s society, you’ll learn how the act of putting the needs of others before your own can help you build value, liberate yourself and have fun doing it,” Kuznia says. When “we stop focusing on what’s wrong, we have the vision to notice the ‘fun’ aspects of our jobs. And in most cases, it was there all along, we just didn’t see it.”

What qualifies Patrick Kuhse to speak about business ethics and how “seemingly unimportant” decisions can cause big trouble? He’s a former certified financial planner whose involvement in a bribery scheme with the Oklahoma State Treasurer’s Office led him to flee and live life as an international fugitive.

Kuhse eventually surrendered and was incarcerated in both a foreign jail and U.S. federal prisons. The primary benefit for attendees of his luncheon presentation, “The Eight Slippery Steps to Unethical Behavior,” will be “a higher recognition of the fact that every decision that we make carries a consequence.”

Kuhse will examine ethical dilemmas that both employees and management confront, particularly in troubled economic times, and offer strategies for ethical decision-making strategies.