Verbal abuse and employees intimidation are among the tales retail employees have shared within the newest Drapers trend retail crime survey 2025.
Respondents described witnessing prison injury to retailer property, motorcycle gangs smashing home windows with employees inside the shop and buyers spitting at employees.
“We have had armed (knife) robberies with a gang that took £40,000 price of inventory and common shoplifting in all our shops has elevated throughout the UK,” one respondent stated.
“A whole lot of our colleagues on the store flooring will be and have been very scared with some having to hunt remedy,” one other stated.
Regardless of fears that retail crime is rising, one respondent felt administration and homeowners have been failing to take acceptable safeguarding motion.
“The larger nationwide retailers and chains can afford further safety employees. However even that also does not appear to forestall or deter retail crime. Sadly, the 1000’s of small independents to medium-sized retailers who actually appear to undergo probably the most merely can not afford to make use of a safety guard to face at their entrance door all day.”
Retail crime reaches file ranges
The feedback assist knowledge from the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Annual Crime Survey that discovered UK retail crime is at its highest degree on file.
Knowledge confirmed violence and abuse of retail employees climbed to greater than 2,000 incidents per day in 2023/24, up from 1,300 the yr earlier than. The most recent determine is greater than 3 times what it was in 2020, when there have been 455 incidents a day.
The BRC examine lined the interval from 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024. It discovered that losses from buyer theft reached a file £2.2bn through the interval, regardless of retailers spending £1.8bn on prevention.
Drapers needs to listen to your experiences of crime throughout the trend retail sector, and what assist companies have to deal with it.
The findings will inform an investigation into how shoplifting and crime impacts companies and folks working within the trend retail sector.
