Sell more and lose less - with ECR Retail Loss

Facial recognition is delivering serious results—one retailer reported a 25% drop in shrink—but it’s still on shaky ground.Professor Emmeline Taylor and Colin Peacock return to explore the real-world complexities of deploying this technology, from shared watchlists and legal grey areas to misidentifications that can make headlines.As more retailers turn to facial recognition, getting the human touch right is crucial: who gets notified, how they respond, and how trust is maintained.With a code of practice now on the table, this is a must-listen for anyone working through their own policies for facial recognition.

What happens when someone orders five beers and a bag of crisps to arrive within 15 minutes but the store only has four beers?Professor Daniel Corsten joins Colin Peacock on the podcast to dissect the economics and challenges of quick commerce. And why they so often don’t add up.From soaring labour costs to out-of-stocks and substitutions, it’s a model that struggles to work in higher-wage markets.Daniel shares fresh insights on where picking costs stack up, the hidden toll of substitutions, and the smart interventions that might make fast fulfilment more viable.A timely reality check for retailers chasing speed and customer satisfaction.

Cameras don’t solve on-shelf availability—but they support it.Daniel Corsten joins Colin Peacock to discuss the latest ECR Retail Loss research and explains why shelf image technology is best seen as an enhancer, not a silver bullet.Supported by case-studies, he explores how retailers are using robots, badges, and fixed cameras to complement—not replace—traditional ways to measure on shelf availability.

Criminologist Joe Clare shares practical lessons from ECR Retail Loss’s recent returns fraud research, revealing how a small group of repeat offenders can drive the bulk of losses. Even though 14% of all customers admit to doing it.Clothing dominates, but camping gear and electronics are also potential targets.He discusses with Colin Peacock how profiling, policy changes, and strategic tagging can disrupt this pseudo-rental behaviour—without damaging the customer experience.

Despite being the cheapest option for food redistribution, less than a quarter of major retailers donate surplus food to their store colleagues.Colin Peacock and ECR Retail Loss’s expert food waste advisor Richard Thalemann explain how one retailer overcame fraud fears, tax headaches and tech hurdles to build a safe, scalable solution that’s a potential blueprint for others to follow.

Some retailers report up to a 25% shrink reduction when they use face recognition.In this episode, Colin and Emmeline explore how stores across the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand are deploying biometric recognition—mostly for watchlist alerts—but also for access control and retrospective investigations.They also tackle the legal, regulatory and ethical issues that retailers the world over are discussing with policymakers.

Is pay-at-pump a quick fix or a false promise? How can retailers reduce drive-offs and maintain supplementary spending?Professor Emmeline Taylor joins Colin Peacock to examine the evolving tactics retailers are using to fight forecourt losses.From digital reporting platforms to the strategic use of ANPR, the episode sheds light on how tech, training, and smarter reporting are reshaping the future of forecourt security.

This week, Colin Peacock is joined by Professor Michael Townsley to reflect on ECR Retail Loss’s first-ever meeting focused on benchmarking KPIs for e-commerce loss — an increasingly vital yet under-defined area of retail loss prevention.Drawing on insights from six global retailers, they explore how different teams are measuring key metrics like acceptance rates, chargebacks, returns disputes, and fraud — often using different language to describe the same problems.Their discussion also highlights the gap between malicious and non-malicious losses, and the importance of creating a unified framework for tracking both.With the goal of building clear benchmarks for the industry, they highlight the need for deeper collaboration, better data, and more interventions to tackle e-commerce loss.