In this episode, I explore the latest trends and technologies in retail loss prevention with my guest David Almasi, Vice President Canada and International Markets at 3SI Security Systems, the world leader in asset protection systems including their state of the art GPS technology. We talk about modern organized retail crime that is plaguing retailers both before and during the COVID era, and explore how the focus on employee and customer safety, asset recovery and connectivity with law enforcement across the country creates a powerful defensive and offensive force for retailers.
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode, I explore the latest trends and technologies in retail loss prevention with my guest David Almasi, Vice President Canada and International Markets at 3SI Security Systems, the world leader in asset protection systems including their state of the art GPS technology. We talk about modern organized retail crime that is plaguing retailers both before and during the COVID era, and explore how the focus on employee and customer safety, asset recovery and connectivity with law enforcement across the country creates a powerful defensive and offensive force for retailers.
Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada. In this episode, I explore the latest trends and technologies in retail loss prevention with my guest, David Almasi, Vice President, Canada and International Markets, at 3SI Security Systems, the world's leader in asset protection systems, including their state of the art GPS technology. We talk about modern organized retail crime that is plaguing retailers both before and during the COVID era, and explore how the focus on employee and customer safety, asset recovery and connectivity with law enforcement across the country creates a powerful defensive and offensive force for retailers.
David Almasi
This is where our sort of our monitoring piece comes in. As soon as these devices are, are taken, and again, there's protocols around that, depending on each retailer.
But then, basically an activation happens. From there, our monitoring center, you know, takes that map activation and works through a protocol. So, whether again, that be through corporate verification, whether that be ultimately, you know, getting to the police, we then work directly with, with law enforcement to track via GPS.
Michael LeBlanc
Sure, sure.
Let's listen in now.
David, welcome to the voice of retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
David Almasi
I'm great. Michael, thank you very much for having me.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, thanks for joining me, I'm looking forward to our conversation. And it looks like you've got a great career in and around loss prevention. So, lots of experience for us to draw on today. And very interesting, sounds like some interesting tactics at 3SI. But let's jump right in, let's tell me about yourself, first of all, your background and your role at 3SI.
David Almasi
Yeah, thank you very much again, Michael. So, my role at 3SI is I am Vice President of Canada and International markets. So obviously, that obviously includes Canada. I obviously take up, look after the Caribbean, Mexico, Latin America, and we have some dealers as well into the Australia and New Zealand area.
Michael LeBlanc
Okay
David Almasi
My background, I've been in security for about 18 years. Worked for some very large companies. So General Electric, when they were in the security industry. ADT, Stanley, mostly in Canada, but do have some global experience and expertise. Joined 3SI about nine months ago, and you know, have loved the experience so far. It's a great organization, really taking what I've learned throughout my career, which has primarily been on the product and on the system integration side, and really melding it both together as a direct to end user company. You know, we really strengthen that product around the whole entire solution. So, it's been very exciting so far in my tenure.
Michael LeBlanc
So, for you, it was an opportunity to, you know, continue your strong background in, in loss prevention, but also to take that a different step so to speak, and being that direct to, to client versus through (inaudible) or through a resellers of that kind of stuff, is that?
David Almasi
Exactly, that's correct, yes. We, especially in North America, we do, we go direct to, we go direct to end user. As we get into the outlying areas, we do work through some local distributors. But yes, obviously, in North America, we do deal through our direct to end user.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, perfect. Well, let's talk about 3SI, the origins of story, the origins of the company, the origin story, where you operate, you just told me a little bit about that. But, you know, what, what, what's the specialty, what's your specialty? And what makes the organization different? I guess, in a short way of saying, what, what attracted you to them?
David Almasi
So yeah, 3SI is about 50 years old. And actually, we're celebrating our 50th anniversary here in 2001. The good news on the Canada side is we've been in the Canadian market more than half of that time, as well. So, that was exciting to me to join a well established organization. Really leading in advanced security solutions for asset protection and recovery. A lot of people are familiar with us, because we really, you know, we really were ahead of the curve, and really started the commercialization of the dye and ink staining products. You know, for people who have, you know, watch movies, and you see the bad guys open up the bag of money and, you know, ink activates or
Michael LeBlanc
Turn into blue Smurfs or something.
David Almasi
Exactly, exactly. Or they're running down the street, and there's smoke emanating from their bag of money. That's, that's really where 3SI, you know, initially started with that sort of technology. And what's really interesting, you know, to myself, is that technology is still, you know, well established around the globe. Yes, we're moving into GPS and we'll, we will talk about that. But that technology, the dye and the ink stain is still being used, you know, across Canada, across North America and around the globe. You know, again, when, when there's a criminal activity and someone gets stained, or as I say, running down the road with, with smoke coming out of a bag, you generally get noticed. And it is a deterrence, that's for sure.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, and you, you mentioned one thing that I'm sure we're going to talk more about in that, that idea of recovery. So, that's an interesting piece and I guess that ties into the whole GPS component. But tell me a little bit about, so you've told me where you are, where you work, and, you know, 50 years of, of experience, talk about the recovery side of the business, and how that, how that fits into the strategy.
David Almasi
Yeah, will do. So, that, that started to really come more about as we got into the GPS side of the business. So, that's in you know, about 15 to 20 years ago, and that's also where we started to move into the retail side of our business and not just being more on the financial side. Being with that, being with GPS allows us to, to not only just track the object and the criminal, but allows for us to then liaison with, with police, and respond for the ultimately the arrest in the recovery of the product. And hopefully, the, the GPS device as well.
We, we're looking at over almost 200,000 locations worldwide. And that's, you know, really sort of our, our, our portfolio of our solution sort of branches across, where we work with the product itself, whether that be say, you know, a purpose built, you know, vessel for whether it be cash, or, you know, mobile phones, tobacco and a myriad of other products. We also have generic GPS types of solutions. But where it really is, you know, sort of the rubber hits the road, is we have a monitoring center that's tracking all of that data. And then, we have a law enforcement division that works with almost 9000 police organizations across North America, that, you know, specifically when these types of crimes happen, we work with, we direct them to the criminals because of the GPS technologies, and therefore we get to the arrest and recovery side of our business.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, that makes you different, right, that law enforcement piece. Talk about that, is that law, you know, former law enforcement professionals who kind of create those connections with police forces around the world by the sounds of it? And then help with the investigation? Or are they really fostering the connection and the handoff connection? Tell me a bit about how that works.
David Almasi
Yeah, so it really encompasses a couple of the things that you mentioned. So first of all, yes, it's, it's in general, ex-law enforcement personnel who come to work for 3SI. We feel obviously, it's very important that they know that side of the business, and how to liaison partner properly with police organizations across North America.
From that they have a sort of a multi, multiple components to the rule. Number one is obviously from an education perspective. So, it's not only educating police departments on what 3SI does. So, the GPS, how it works, you know, those sorts of components, but we will work directly with them on potentially sting operations with the police themselves. So, placing trackers into, you know, different retail organizations or different retail verticals, if there is a specific, you know problem being identified.
What we also do, and which works really well is we ensure that every law enforcement division knows when there is a 3SI customer and solution being deployed anywhere across North America. So, what I mean by that is, it could be in you know, it could be in Toronto, Sault Saint Marie, Edmonton, wherever it may be, there's obviously a police department that looks after that jurisdiction. If we're coming in, with whatever product and it's not just the product, there's usually, usually some sort of protocol that goes along with that product. And what I mean by that is, if something happens, i.e., it's taken out, it's, it's been activated, there's some sort of protocol that goes along with that, i.e., police are notified right away, i.e., we make sure it's verified. So, we've worked with the LP or the security department of the organization to ensure it was, it's a verified crime. That yes, it wasn't sold to a customer, oh, it wasn't knocked off the shelf on, you know, you know, by accident, it's actually a crime. So, we've worked through all those different scenarios and inform and educate that police jurisdiction, that if you receive contact from us, from this specific vendor, or retailer, this is the scenario that you're, you're bound to,
Michael LeBlanc
To be walking into, right? Know what they're getting into, yeah,
David Almasi
Yeah, no, exactly. So, it's very wide ranging and how we deal with it. But this close relation relationship ties back, Michael, into what you're talking about, with regards to you know, the apprehension and recovery. Because police know who we are, because they know who, or what, our products do. They're well versed, well educated, they know that when they get contacted, it's not a false alarm. It's not like a, you know, we see it's not like a car alarm going out in the street and everyone ignores it, something's happened, they need to respond. And that's why we're in the 75 to 80% range of apprehensions and recovery, you know, over the last, say, 15 years that we've been tracking that sort of data.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, I guess it allows you also to pick up on the trends, and it's a good segue to me, for me to ask you about what you're hearing from retailers, what you're hearing from the clients. I you know, I know, I know, speaking to retailers that, you know, customers are acting up in stores, but I don't have a clear idea of is crime up down or sideways during the COVID era. I mean, these are, you know, in some municipalities, some places where I am today, here in Toronto, many stores are closed, but that doesn't necessarily mean things are simmering down. Give us a perspective of what, what you're hearing, what trends you're hearing from your retail customers?
David Almasi
Yeah, so just to touch on what you had mentioned. Unfortunately, when you get these, you know, these life changing events like COVID, it affects how, how crime, you know, works and how it's activated. And we are, and retailers are, you know, seeing an uptake, uptick in these type of events, unfortunately. And what's really unfortunate about it, and we're seeing it as a trend, you know, not only across Canada, but across North America as well, is that they're starting to be getting into more of greater violence and brazen theft activity. You know, we're starting to see, you know, zip ties being used, you know. Just forcibly removing not, you know, you know, not taking something putting under their coat and walking out, it's swiping a whole row of something, potentially into a cart or a bag running out, knocking people over, it's just getting more and more violent.
Michael LeBlanc
We saw, we saw that in the before time, like before, COVID, right? Because I guess the the thinking was that I'm just going to make such a big fuss, and I'm going to make the employee just back up. And you know, and just, you know, act out violent or genuine violence, and then some understanding about, you know, retailers want to keep their employees safe. So, I guess it's kind of trying to, you know, trying to, it's not new in other words, it's not new to the COVID era, right?
David Almasi
I would say not. It's been escalating, unfortunately, over the last few years. But as I mentioned, we are seeing a bit of an uptick on the, on the, on the crime side. And especially on the ORC side of it as well, that, you know, unfortunately, we're seeing, we're seeing more and more instances of violence as well.
Michael LeBlanc
Is there anything you can pinpoint that would be unique to the COVID era? I think, I guess there's more unemployment, for example, but that would create more, more need or opportunity, or however we want to characterize it. But is there anything specific? I mean, I think that many customers are wearing masks that may make it more or less difficult, right? It's funny, when you used to see a customer walk in the store with a mask on, it was immediately, you know, would draw your attention, now we're gonna have to deal with that for years. It's just normal.
David Almasi
Exactly. Well, you hit on two good points there, exactly. Right now, yes, unemployment is up, you know, so people are unfortunately looking at, you know, criminal activities. Second point is, no longer is it, you know, uncommon to view someone with a mask, as you mentioned, everyone's wearing one. It's uncommon not to. And I think the third component of that as well is, it comes back to, you know, the employee side and also on the security guard side, how you actually deal with, you know, something happening has been changing over the last, you know, few years. You know, you, people are telling they don't want their employees to, you know, react to, you know, a criminal and potentially hurt themselves. You know, even, you know, I was reading last weekend on the CDC, there was conversations around how, what type of force security guards should be using. So, all these different sorts of components that now that there's question marks on whether they should be apprehended, how should they, should be apprehended, is starting to see that uptick in crime because they're feeling people you know, if they can get away with it, the brazen attempt, you seem to be more and more increasing over this last year.
Michael LeBlanc
And that, and that mask piece is important, right? Because a big part of preventing theft was you know, making sure that you're not anonymous, right, that you'd be acknowledged. I mean, that's part of part of Operation right, acknowledge every customer, you know, for both the reasons of making sure they feel welcome and also making sure they feel known.
David Almasi
Exactly and as well, you know, so taking it just you know, a little bit off the security side as well. You know, more and more retailers also want to, they don't want to, they want to make sure they have the appropriate controls in place, but they really need to have that convenience nowadays. You know, if COVID has taught us anything, it's you're now ordering more online, your you know, curbside pickups, mobile payments, you know, all these sorts of, you know contactless interactions are happening. So, having security guard standing around having, you know, higher dollar items in behind cages where you have to go find an employee to go back and open up the cage, these things, just retailers are just looking at this and going, "We can't do this. It's not convenience to our customers anymore". So, they're looking to try to find ways how do we merge these, the appropriate controls to that, you know, contactless interactions at the retail level?
Michael LeBlanc
Well, that's such an interesting point, right. Because retailers, and I think even more so in the post COVID era, will look to remove friction from the buying experience, right. But as you say, that, that often means, you know, the product is out on the counter, it's out from behind where it's safest, I guess. So, if that's one thing, in terms of a priority, you're hearing from retailers, can you think of any others? A couple of other priorities that they're saying, 'Listen, here's what, what my big priority is now. And what I think it's going to be moving forward'.
David Almasi
Yeah, from what we're hearing from LP personnel as well is that they're actually you know, being asked to be in lockstep with the business to help remove that friction and increase sales. So, it's not just lets, you know, stop shop lifting, or maybe stop the bad guys, it's, 'Hey, Mr., or Mrs., or Ms., LP person, how do you help me increase sales? How do you help us improve profits from the right shoppers, you know, and help us build that better customer experience, while still mitigating, you know, the risks right of of those bad actors?' So, the LP team is now being asked to do much more from a functional perspective, other than just quote, unquote, catch the bad person.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, I tell you in my career, and I was with Hudson's Bay back in the late 90s, so you know, lots of experience in retail, LP in my mind is moved from being very tactical to being very strategic, particularly now.
Let's talk about, listen, there's lots of things that are in stores that help prevent theft and crime. But, let's talk about this, you know, this GPS technology. Why is it a better way? Why do you think that's a winning solution? What can it do? And let's, let's unpack that for a bit.
David Almasi
Yeah, you bet. Well, I think we've covered a lot of, a lot of ideas, Michael, and I think a lot of the ideas is where the GPS, you know, technology really, really hits home. So, from a 3SI perspective, you know, we we break up the retailer really into five zones, right. So that's the interior back, you know, the store rooms, those sorts of, you know, location. The interior front, which is, you know, your general public, your brand reputation, you know, entry and exit at zone three, you know, exterior transport, and then the community side of it as well. So, if we take a look at those zones, that's really where 3SI and the GPS technology really, you know, starts to bear fruit, right. So, we're being able to, and the key word here is 'covertly' embedded products in those first few zones. So, whether it be in the store rooms, you know, in the, in the, in the back, or even up front. As mentioned, you know, we have purpose built products that blend, you know, identically, you know, into, you know, certain customers, you know, retail environments. Never know, they're, they're criminals don't know, they're there. And it works very, very well from, from that perspective.
You know, we also then work back on the entry and exit side, right, is how are we actually protecting the retail staff, you know, as we're coming in, and as they're, as they're working together with the, with the GPS technology. It's not just about, you know, alarms, and you know, sending off buzzers, but really sort of keeping them out of the fray, right. And keeping, you know, keeping them as safe as possible. And as we mentioned, you know, keeping personnel safe is a big, big win for organizations.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, unpack that one a little bit for me. So, for you know, for the listeners who may not be so experienced in understanding LP. So tell me, tell me, you know, unpack a couple of those things for me. So, what is it actually, you know, what is your technique? What does the product do? I know it’s GPS, so you can locate it, but tell me how it keeps employees safe,
David Almasi
From a high level, keeping employees safe, so this is a lot what we're allowing to have happen is really having the criminal come in and take, you know, the devices that are there. We're not trying to sit there and stop them, and have employees you know, you know, go and try to tackle people. If they know the GPS, or devices, and they're already interspersed, you know, into, you know, the devices that maybe there. Criminal comes in, takes a handful or sweeps a shell, the devices in there. So, therefore, the actual store personnel aren't going to be chasing them out, you know, into the street and trying to do something. This is where our sort of, our monitoring piece comes in. As soon as these devices are, are taken, and again, there's protocols around that, depending on each retailer.
Michael LeBlanc
Sure, sure.
David Almasi
But then, but basically an activation happens. From there, our monitoring center, you know, takes that map activation, and works through a protocol. So, whether again, that be through corporate verification, whether that be ultimately, you know, getting to the police, we then work directly with, with law enforcement to track via GPS, where that person's going, where you know, how it's, you know, how they're moving. And ultimately, you know, get the police to the location.
Michael LeBlanc
I can see how that would be so beneficial, particularly around ORC, right. So, you could see clusters of your devices come together, and you can follow a movement of them. So, you can really get beyond just the petty, the petty crime and really get into the heart of the matter, which of course, we know as retail, or organized retail crime, right?
David Almasi
You've hit some, you've hit a couple of great points, Michael. And yes, we've actually have seen that where we've actually had ORC, you know, groups, you know, do simultaneous crimes, and we've seen them in our tracks actually converge into a centralized location. It's very interesting to watch and see. What we've also found is by us tracking this, we then get to, once police are involved, we definitely see, and we see all the time, you know, when we actually get to the criminal location where there are multiple devices, not only from us, but we're seeing you know, thefts from other stores.
Michael LeBlanc
Sure, sure.
David Almasi
It's, it's almost, it, we're almost talking to 70% of crime now is in that ORC. So, it's very inside of it. So, it's very important, you know, for us to continue down that road and work with our customers, because we may just be tracking it from a store, that's our customer, but may end up seeing where this criminal, or this criminal organization, have hit four, or five, or six different stores, you know, and you know, the product is at that location when the police go for apprehension.
Michael LeBlanc
Right, so it's good for the whole, the whole retail industry.
David, one of the things you said and touched upon, I wanted to come back to his community, you know, you talked about, you know, behind, behind and in front of, in front of the customers, but you touched on community, how does that play in? And tell me a little bit more about that, and your technology and your solutions and all that stuff.
David Almasi
Yeah, so, Michael, so, when I talked about the five zones that 3SI tries to impact, you know, zone five is community. And, it's really about the safety of the general public and the brand reputation of the retailer itself as well. You know, why, you know, we, we've been talking about, you know, over our time here, about arrest and recovery is precisely about that whole community side of it. Creating safer communities and safer shopping environments, quite frankly, right. The, where we're looking at it, so when these, when these, you know, criminals are apprehended, it really creates, you know, across the community, you know, good feelings. So, what does that mean? So, it creates good feelings for the retailer itself, 'Hey, someone just can't come in and steal things from us'. It creates good feelings about the staff. So, I'm a staff personnel, I worked there, someone comes in, hey, they were caught, that makes me feel safe. And makes,
Michael LeBlanc
Somebody has got my back. Somebody has got my back, right.
David Almasi
Exactly. I think, from the whole and community itself, that sort of a word, you know, gets out that these things, you know, criminals are coming to these, this location, and they're being caught, they're being apprehended, this is a safe shopping environment.
And I think lastly, I just want to tie it back to our, our, our work with law enforcement, we need those good, those good stories for law enforcement as well, that something happened, you know, the retailer called the police, police came, apprehended the criminal good news story for the police as well. So, that's why that whole community of our sort of zone five is very, very important. That right from, you know, the retailer itself all the way through the staff, community, and the police. It's all about good feelings, you know, and good things happening.
Michael LeBlanc
Listen, it, it's such interesting stuff from you know, dye, you know, color things that blow up in people's faces all the way to this high-tech GPS, you know, it sounds really slick. Where can where can retailers go to learn more? And how do they get in touch with you? And how do they figure out what's the next steps?
David Almasi
Yeah so, definitely get in touch with us obviously via web and social media. So 3sisecurity.com is our website. We're also you know, through LinkedIn, and Twitter as well. And, on our, on our website, you can dig into a lot more, you know, detail. We have white papers that can be downloaded and,
Michael LeBlanc
Case studies, I saw some case studies, case studies.
David Almasi
Yeah, exactly some case studies. Yeah, some really. some really interesting ones. Obviously, we, you know, we can't be quite as overt as, as some of our, other, some of the other security companies and say this is who we work for, because,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
David Almasi
Yeah, that sort of defeats the purpose.
Michael LeBlanc
Yup,
David Almasi
Yes, there are lots of white paper and, and case studies on our, on our website. You know, who we partner, who we partner with from a retail, law enforcement, financial side organizations that we're part of, and also through them, you can get in touch with myself, or anyone, you know, in North America through either info or our sales and marketing links there as well.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, well, sure. And send me your email address, I'll put that in the show notes. Because I know LP professionals know that you're just scratching the surface when you're going to websites for companies like yours, right. Because really, the key information they need to know is, is delivered one to one, and which is what keeps the integrity to the process and keeps the bad guys on their heels in the you know, not being able to figure out all the, all the things you're doing to counter their things, right.
David Almasi
Yeah, exactly.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, well listen, thanks for joining me. Interesting conversation, really an important element of retail and I really appreciate you joining me and sharing some of the, what you're hearing from retailers and some of the new technology you're bringing, bringing to the market. So, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail.
David Almasi
Well, thank you very much Michael, it's been my pleasure.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning into today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure and follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts, so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news and insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating review as it really helps us grow so that we continue to get amazing guests onto the show. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. Leblanc Company Inc. And, if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website at meleblanc.co. Until next time, stay safe. Have a great week.