Health food retailer Holland & Barrett is rolling out an Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) system with integrated visitor counting at 135 stores in the UK. The EVOLVE system will allow the retailer to tackle theft and accurately measure customer throughput.
Holland & Barrett which includes the Julian Graves name has over 1000 stores across the UK, Ireland and Holland. The retailer initially elected to install Checkpoint Systems’ visitor counting solution, CheckCount, as a stand-alone system to monitor sales effectiveness of its staff and gather quantified results from marketing campaigns. However, the retail chain saw benefits of an integrated EAS and visitor counting system, for loss prevention and the marketing and sales.
Jon Pilkington, Internal Audit Manager at Holland & Barrett, said: “The results of the CheckCount trial were extremely positive and gave us access to detailed data that we needed in order to improve our sales techniques in individual stores, as well as gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. With ‘people-counting’ technology we are able to measure which promotions get customers through the door.”
“We had initially approached Checkpoint solely about visitor counting,” added Pilkington. “After a limited initial trial of the CheckCount solution, Checkpoint suggested we explore the new EVOLVE EAS system with a visitor counting solution integrated into the EAS pedestals. We previously had no EAS systems in our stores, so we were eager to see how they could reduce shrink and increase our average transaction value by allowing us to give customers open access to more of our products, knowing the products would now be secured from theft. The integrated EVOLVE solution provided us with the same accurate visitor counting data, but also helped us to reduce shrink. The EVOLVE system was a perfect fit for us as it allowed us to solve two problems with one solution. As such we agreed to run a three-month trial of the EVOLVE integrated platform.”
The results of the trial convinced Holland & Barrett to roll out Checkpoint’s EVOLVE EAS system to tackle shrink, increase shelf availability, monitor customer throughput, improve store operations and ultimately enhance their bottom-line performance. The EVOLVE antennas, integrated with Checkpoint’s visitor counting solution, will be fitted at store entrances. Holland & Barrett is using Checkpoint’s Enhanced Performance (EP) labels with the EVOLVE system. The EP Labels family includes labels that are significantly smaller in size, for small health and vitamin items.
Pilkington added: “We agreed to an initial trial period of three months, and we were so impressed with the results that we decided to fully roll out the EVOLVE solution, incorporating visitor counting. The integrated systems’ ability to monitor activity in-store, increase our average transaction value and secure our merchandise from theft, delivered a return on investment far more quickly than other systems.”
EVOLVE’s integrated visitor counting is powered by the EVOLVE VisiPlus unit, a bi-directional people counter housed on the antenna that measures the number of people entering and exiting a store. The system’s built-in connectivity allows data to be automatically exported daily for detailed analysis and reporting. This helps retailers improve store operations and, when combined with PoS transactional data, understand their customer conversion rate.
Holland & Barrett also chose to integrate EAS compliance management tools into the EVOLVE system. Store staff members enter reasons for EAS activations into CheckPro Compliance Manager – a small unit near the store entrance/exit. This information is then uploaded to Checkpoint’s Web-based reporting service, where retailers can remotely monitor and report on the reasons for EAS activations. The reports help the loss prevention department maximize the return on their EAS investment by allowing them to pinpoint operational issues and initiate corrective actions, and ensure that staff are actively engaged in the EAS programme.
Per Levin, worldwide president of Checkpoint’s Shrink Management Solutions business, added: “We are pleased that we have been able to take Holland & Barrett into the loss prevention arena. Due to the recession, more and more retailers have started to look at visitor counting technology as a way of improving sales within their stores. Holland & Barrett is leading the way by introducing EVOLVE, a revolutionary solution that helps to reduce shrink, improve merchandise availability and leverage real-time data in ways never before possible. EVOLVE has been installed at 135 Holland & Barrett stores across the UK and Ireland to date, with additional stores planned.
