Inventory Shrinkage from Employee Theft and Shoplifting

$1.4B-2.5B annually in US fashion retail alone (1.4-1.6% of $150B+ in annual fashion sales); scaled globally to $5B-10B; Avery Dennison report confirms supply chain blind spots are 'quietly eroding profitability' • $10,000-$20,000 annually (corporate account churn risk; reputation damage; restocking costs) • $10,000-$20,000 annually per stockroom (internal theft from back-of-house; high-value items targeted; $3-5 per item on average small apparel loss)

Ad-hoc Excel tracking of inventory variances and WhatsApp coordination for suspicious activity alerts. • Associates track high-ticket event items with handwritten fitting room logs, informal hold racks, sticky notes, and one-off spreadsheets to remember which items should be in stock and which customer or employee last handled them. • Associates track inbound cartons, partial picks, and adjustments for wholesale orders in spreadsheets and paper pick tickets, cross-checking against POS or ERP exports to locate missing units and distinguish theft from vendor or administrative errors.