ABCP (the Association of Business Crime Partnerships) reports that it has been working with a number of retailers to develop a way for retailers and partnerships to work more closely together and to be able to contact each other and develop operational relationship. The aim; that crime and other issues of mutual interest can be dealt with effectively.
This work has concluded with an agreement which will provide retailers who have signed up to the Retail Mentors Scheme and ABCP member partnerships, to have access to contact details through the ABCP website.
The public area of the ABCP website now contains a ‘Retail Mentor Scheme’ page. It sets out the objectives of the scheme and contains the details of how it can help retailers and partnerships to work more closely together against retail crime.
The members’ only area contains a ‘Retail Mentor Contacts’ page detailing retailers who have joined the scheme so far – Monsoon/Accessorise, New Look, Next, Peacocks, JD Sports and Republic.
Richard Lawrance, Head of Audit and Loss Prevention for Monsoon/Accessorise, and chair of the Fashion Forum said: ‘We are all working to achieve the same thing and this will helps us to develop positive relationships between our regional loss prevention managers and partnerships and will be an excellent way to enhance the effectiveness of partnerships.’
Mike Schuck, operations director of ABCP said: ‘This has been welcomed by all partnerships I have spoken to, including the chairmen of both the Northwest and South Wales regional forums, whose meetings I recently attended. The are both very keen to make contact with regional LPMs and invite them to their next meetings and to individual partnership meetings.
‘This scheme will help to create a dynamic and pro-active relationship between partnerships and their retail members which can only be of benefit to all involved in trying to combat business crime. Retailers have a great deal of valuable in-house intelligence about travelling offenders and I would expect this to become a important asset in dealing with those high end offenders.’
For more information about the Retail Mentors scheme, contact Mike Schuck, pictured, at ABCP.
