Seeking to respond to thieves, including organised gangs, the retailer JD Sport has fitted their flagship Oxford Street store with a new Agon Concept Tag in preference to other EAS (electronic article surveillance) tagging. After eight weeks and 400,000 shoppers, there has been no evidence of even one of the 65,000 Agon Concept Tags supplied being illicitly removed at the London West End store.
Tim Edwards Group Loss Control Director for JD said: “Frankly this is an amazing turnaround. We have used EAS tagging for many years throughout our 800 stores. The increasingly high incidence of illicit tag removal is what drove us to work with Agon for a better solution in the first place. The Agon Concept Tag is surpassing all expectations.”
JD has been working with the EAS manufacturer Agon Systems for almost two years on the tag. Earlier this year the Tag was pronounced “unbeatable” by Tony Sales, a fraudster turned tester of retail security products. Sean Welch, MD of Agon Systems said: “We are delighted that the Tag is performing so well, but then after the many years of work spent developing it, together with the most rigorous testing that any EAS tag has ever been exposed to, we had every confidence that it would. Of course, like any other tag the Agon Concept Tag can only go so far in preventing thieves from stealing clothing with a tag still attached. The big difference with our Tag is that even away from the store it still cannot be removed without destroying the garment and rendering it worthless. So as word spreads throughout the criminal community the Agon Concept Tag will become an ever greater deterrent.”
