Retailers getting ransacked
‘Tis the season — for rampant shoplifting.
Organized crews of looters have been terrorizing a slew of major retailers ahead of the holidays and it’s hitting companies’ bottom line and employees hard.
“We are seeing more and more, particularly organized retail crime,” Best Buy chief executive Corie Barry said this week on a call with analysts.
“You can see that pressure in our financials. And more importantly, frankly, you can see that pressure with our associates. It’s traumatizing.”
Barry’s comments on Tuesday came as the electronics giant posted a decline in gross profit margin for the fiscal third quarter — which it blamed, in part, on organized theft.
Brazen looters have been particularly prevalent in San Francisco, where crews went on a days-long crime spree starting Friday evening, breaking into posh shops like Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdale’s in Union Square.
At the Louis Vuitton, as many as 40 thieves smashed windows and grabbed whatever items they could while loading them into waiting cars, said District Attorney Chesa Boudin in announcing felony charges against nine suspected shoplifters.
“These brazen acts will not be tolerated in San Francisco,” Boudin said in a statement. “But the problem is bigger than our city. Last weekend, there were similar incidents in Walnut Creek, Hayward, Oakland and San Jose.”
In the Walnut Creek incident Saturday, a Nordstrom was besieged by dozens of thieves wearing ski masks and carrying crowbars and guns. They made off with as much as $200,000 in merchandise, reports said. Three employees suffered injuries, police said.
The crime spree continued Sunday in Hayward, where 10 people smashed cases to snatch jewelry.
Another group of thieves hit a sunglasses shop and a Lululemon store in San Jose, stealing nearly $50,000 in merchandise, police said.
San Francisco Assistant Police Chief Mike Redmond said extra cops would be deployed in shopping areas and expects more arrests to come.
Last week, 14 suspects pilfered more than $120,000 in merchandise from a Louis Vuitton in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook — pulling large plastic bags from their coats and filling them with stolen goods.
Organized crime costs retailers $700,000 for every $1 billion in sales, according to a National Retail Federation survey late last year, which also found that 65 percent of retailers said gangs of thieves are showing “greater levels of violence and aggression than they have before,” according to the survey.
Only 29 percent of retailers reported an average dollar value loss of $1,000 in 2019, but that number rose to 50 percent in 2020, according to the survey. Among the most common items stolen are designer clothing, laundry detergent, designer handbags, allergy medicine, razors, high-end liquor and pain relievers.
In October, Walgreens said it was closing five drugstores in San Francisco that had experienced high rates of shoplifting, attributing the thefts to “organized crime.”
“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” Walgreens spokesperson Phil Caruso said at the time.
Some experts blame the brazen theft surge on a 2014 law in San Francisco, which lessened the penalty for shoplifting to a misdemeanor if the theft is less than $950.