Shrink isn’t just a shoplifting problem, it’s a systems problem. We sit down with Brand Elverston, former Walmart asset protection leader and now principal at Elverston Consulting, to unpack why losses start at the purchase order and ripple through the supply chain long before an item ever hits the shelf. The conversation gets practical fast: what “total retail loss” really means, why administrative errors and inventory chaos can be as expensive as theft, and how leaders can target the biggest drivers without destroying the customer experience.We dig into item-level RFID as the backbone of truth. When you can reconcile orders, receipts, and on-hand counts at the SKU level, you stop guessing and start fixing. Brand shares how leading retailers are pairing RFID with computer vision to move beyond post-event video. Real-time analytics at self-checkout, abnormal shelf sweeps, and frictionless associate interventions are shifting loss prevention from reactive to proactive. The result: fewer lockups, faster service, and fewer reasons for customers to abandon baskets for next-day delivery elsewhere.Omnichannel adds new doors for product to move, curbside pickups, ship-from-store, third-party shoppers, and each door adds risk. We outline the playbook for controlling these flows: identity verification for pickup, serialized tracking on high-risk items, exception alerts that prioritize engagement over confrontation, and upstream data-sharing with CPGs and carriers to reconcile discrepancies before they become write-offs. We also tackle the hard topic of store closures, making the case for re-engineering high-risk locations with scalable tech and smarter processes so communities keep access to essential retail.If you care about retail operations, asset protection, or customer experience, this is a clear-eyed roadmap to cut shrink and grow sales at the same time.Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of data, store design, and omnichannel performance, and leave a review to tell us where your team is starting the journey.

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