GOTCHA! / THWARTING THE THIEVES : High-Tech Help : Such devices as sound emitters and dye tags that stain merchandise are being employed to frustrate shoplifters.
Behind the scenes in your neighborhood mall is a wealth of gadgetry designed to keep merchandise from leaving the premises before it is duly processed through the cashier.
Near tastefully arranged floor displays are video cameras, observation windows, two-way mirrors and electronic triggers glued onto consumer goods. Lock-in hanger racks and tether cables protect upscale garments. Engineering ingenuity strives to keep up with larceny.
“It’s a shell game,” said Mike Myers, who oversees security nationally for Casual Corner and other women’s fashion chains. “Eventually, they will overcome anything. We hope then a new technology will again put us five years ahead of the shoplifter.”
Those charted with protecting merchandise know that professional shoplifters have rendered inadequate one device traditionally used to deter theft--the familiar magnetic tag clamped onto clothing items. Designed to trigger microwave or radio frequency alarms at store exits, the tags are often pried off.
But engineers have sorted out new means of keeping sticky-fingered shoppers at bay.
They have produced a clothing tag that has its own sound emitter and can be programmed to begin pulsing as it leaves its home department--allowing time for security to meet fleeing felons at the front door. Unfortunately, a single device goes for about $6--pricing it out of the market for all but designer fashions.
Meanwhile, back at R & D, technologists built a contraption that affixes to the shelf or rack instead of the item.
This cunning device is weight sensitive, so when items are removed from a display it sounds an alarm at a remote location, summoning clerks. It’s also capable of voice contact with the surprised customer. This, says Bob Frazier of Protex International Corp., which markets the product, is called, “having a customer-service aspect as well as a degree of deterrence.”
Frazier has no orders locally, but May Co. confirmed that it is testing the units to see if it works for them.
Security Tag has developed what it calls a “Two-tier” tag, containing both a sensor magnet and a dye capsule, and has just begun marketing a tiny metal and plastic jewelry tag. Unclamping the jaws of this tag results in mangled necklaces and watchbands.
But the dye tag is the company’s star performer. It has recently been upgraded to stain in two colors, electric yellow and gentian violet--so that both dark and light fabrics will be equally defaced.
Merchants report that losses drop dramatically after attaching the tags--and are reassured to know that goods that do leave will catch thieves purple-handed.
