Hamley’s is the toy shop in London. At school holiday times and above all Christmas, that can mean thousands of people in store. The security manager tells Mark Rowe how his team have not only loss prevention to consider, but safety of customers.
Darren Rousell, the security manager at Hamley’s, has only been with the firm for six months, so he does not havepersonal experience of the Christmas rush at the Regent Street store. He knows what he and his team will have to handle, though. The store’s fire limit of people is set at 11,000 and even over six floors of selling space, that is a lot of people under one roof. At such peak times of the year, designated entry and exit points are necessary for customers, ‘so they can go in one way and leave one way, instead of people trying to get in and out of the same doors.’ Security staff have to be alert and on hand to control possible bottle-necks. Darren says: ‘We are actually employing temporary staff over Christmas for crowd control, located at customer lifts.’ At the top of the escalator from the ground to first floor, and first to second floor, customers tend to want to stand and look around them, so it is the job of staff to move people on so as not to block the escalator. Crowd control at the front door is by the in-house security team. To Darren, it’s a matter of planning ahead – and for the January sales, as well. ‘That’s why I wanted the CCTV system in place before Christmas,’ he adds. The upgraded system now has 64 cameras, both fixed and Vicon domes, which gives near total coverage of the store, compared with about 70 per cent coverage previously. The security department knows its ‘hot-spot’ areas that are monitored all the time. In the basement, the high-value computer games are sold. On the ground floor, there are cuddly toys – very holdable, huggable and carry-awayable – of all sizes. The biggest ones retail at up to œ2,500. Other areas that stand out for monitoring purposes are loading bays and staff access areas, for internal loss prevention. The CCTV, installed and maintained by ADT, is digitally recorded. Darren singles out the ability to search for a recorded incident at the press of a few computer keys as an advantage to the old VCR. He reports that Hamley’s was using 200 tapes a month for recording purposes. (Present recording is real-time, for 31 days.) The street behind Hamley’s is covered by a dome camera; the store does get requests from the police for footage if there has been problems in the night with paparazzi (perhaps as many as 20) outside a nearby entertainment venue. The store also has two pinhole cameras that can be used to tackle internal and external theft. These can be connected to the main CCTV system, and viewed (with password protection) through a PC. Also covered by cameras are the fire exits, which on all floors are alarmed. ‘So if anyone goes through a fire exit they shouldn’t go through, we can bring up a camera that covers it.’
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Now that the control room is up and running, the security department is running staff awareness training for new and existing workers alike, in things like credit card fraud, spotting fraudulent banknotes, and fire and bomb-drill. The security team works with Hamley’s cash office and the cash in transit contractor (Securicor) on making sure cash collections are secure. Darren says: ‘We are here to help, not hinder, the retail staff, in anything they do, and we are here basically to save the company money and not be security officers sitting on a door.’
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Those doors are open seven days a week, and until 8pm on Monday to Saturday The store also runs parties for children (and grown-ups) some evenings that have to be looked after. Darren mentions recent cases like Milly Dowler and Sarah Payne and adds that staff have to be police-checked, and first-aid trained, if they are to have anything to do with the children at parties. On a related topic, the pre-Christmas rush makes it more likely that children will become separated from their parents in-store. Hamley’s will not put out a tannoy message for over-16s, taking the view that people of that age should be able to find their own way to the front door. General staff are trained in how to get the right information from a – most likely distraught – adult who is reporting a missing child: when was the child lost, where was it last seen, its age and gender. That way staff can get to work to find the missing person as promptly as possible.
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What’s more, Hamley’s is a port of call for holiday-makers and celebrities, both as visitors and product-launchers (in October, Derek Batey of TV’s Mr and Mrs quiz show signed copies of the Mr and Mrs board game), film crews and TV presenters. Michael Jackson has recently been to Hamley’s – when it was closed so that the singer could have the shop to himself. By contrast, actor Bruce Willis was on holiday with his family and wanted to be treated like any other customer. In such cases it is a question for the security team of liaising with the celebrity’s bodyguard or personal assistant, to ask what is needed – even if it is only, as in Bruce Willis’ case, a need for security to keep their distance. Especially in the run-up to Christmas, Hamley’s hosts corporate functions, and people can hire the store so that they can shop privately – which might mean several hundred people, who have paid for the privilege.
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As for relations with security-related bodies beyond the store, Darren reports that average police response time is ten minutes: ‘We have a very good working relationship with West End Central police station.’ The store is building up a relationship with the ‘Red Caps’, the uniformed patrollers of Regent Street, Oxford Street and Piccadilly who direct tourists and provide reassurance. Inside the store, a member of the security team will be on duty at the main entrance, because in Hamley’s view it is better to turn away trouble-makers who are not there to shop at an early stage, rather than have people making trouble on the third or fourth floors, and annoying many more customers both there and as they are escorted out of the store. Hamley’s wants to be, and to be seen to be, a fun place to shop, where customers will not be bothered by any trouble. Hamley’s echoes the aim of leisure parks such as Alton Towers to offer customers ‘magic’. It’s a hands-on place – sales staff offering product demos, a display of cuddly toys near the front door that all start shaking and guffawing if you so much as touch one. To repeat what Darren says, the task of the security team is to help not hinder – to work with marketing for example to make sure that a new display does not interfere with CCTV coverage. The security department, then, has to know what is going on throughout the store, and to know the right members of staff to talk to.
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There is a security side to Hamley’s stock, you know. If you turn to page 57 of the Christmas 2002 catalogue, behold a new ‘handy truster lie detector’, a portable gadget that profiles and analyses speech flow (œ69.99); and an electronic lock n’ safe (œ19.99, requires 3AA batteries, not included). So if you’re casting around this month for gift ideas …
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About the security manager: Darren Rousell has an armed forces background – ten years in the infantry. More recently he has been in retail security – first with Chubb Security, then at HMV and Next. Hamley’s, his current employers, are helping to put him through a degree course in security and risk management at the University of Portsmouth.
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About Hamley’s: six floors, 49,000 square feet, including a cafe on the top floor.
