Latest news with #AmandaMull
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Everyone Hates Locked Shelves. Even the Retailers.
(Bloomberg) -- Never miss an episode. Follow The Big Take daily podcast today. If you've been to a store like CVS, Walgreens or Target in the last few years, you may have noticed a trend: more and more essentials are locked up behind plexiglass walls. The strategy started as an anti-theft measure. But there's little evidence that it's worked. On today's Big Take podcast, Bloomberg's Amanda Mull takes host Sarah Holder through the causes and consequences of the retail lock-up era – and how it's changed the way we shop. Listen and follow The Big Take on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Terminal clients: click here to subscribe. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation: Sarah Holder: It's 90 degrees outside. You're sweating from your morning commute and almost late for a meeting. So you pop into a Walgreens or CVS to grab a seltzer and, just to be safe, a little emergency deodorant. But you get slowed down because that deodorant… is locked up. TikTok: Trying to get some deodorant. I've been waiting three minutes-ish… TikTok: You can't even get socks because it's locked. TikTok: Since when are soft caramels a controlled substance?! Holder: This is the plight of the modern shopper. If you've tried to buy something in person at a retailer like Target or CVS in the past few years – you've probably noticed that more and more everyday items, from deodorant to soft caramels, seem to be barricaded behind plastic shields. Amanda Mull: If you're in a location where corporate leadership has decided that stuff needs to be locked up in those stores, it can be almost anything that you find behind lock and key. Holder: Bloomberg's Amanda Mull has been closely following this retail trend. She says it's been around for a while, but it really took off in the US in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. But four years later, Amanda says there's little evidence that locking up essentials has done retailers any good. And now, there's more and more evidence… that the practice might be backfiring. Tim Wentworth: When you lock things up, for example, you don't sell as many of them. We've kind of proven that pretty conclusively. Holder: That was Walgreens' CEO, Tim Wentworth, on an earnings call in January. It was a surprising admission. Because locking up items started off as a move that a lot of companies adopted as part of a broader fight against shoplifting. And now... Mull: He acknowledged that locking stuff up has hurt the retailer. It has reduced sales. It has annoyed customers. It has driven people to shop elsewhere. Holder: So where does that leave shoppers on a hot, busy day? Will your body wash stay behind lock and key? Will that Olay ever see the light of day? TikTok: I had to keep pressing the button of like 'assistance needed for people who smell bad' and over and over, and no one ever came. No one ever came! What? Holder: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. Today on the show: the consequences of the retail lock-up era. How the trend caught on, what it would take for it to end – and how it's already changed the way we shop. Holder: When did you first start to see items locked up on store shelves? Mull: Locking up certain types of things in certain types of stores goes back to like when I was working at Best Buy in college in the mid-2000s. There has for a really long time been like very particular products that are like a high theft risk because they're small, they're valuable, they're in high demand. Mull: When I was there, it was a lot of like PlayStation games, now you see a lot of expensive cell phone accessories, sometimes phone chargers, things that are easy to conceal, it would be easy to flip. Holder: These days, Amanda covers retail and writes a column about consumer culture for Businessweek. Since her college days at Best Buy, stores have changed pretty significantly. Amanda says they're not just locking up small, expensive electronic products. They're locking up… everything. Mull: At a particular Target, I found men's underwear, men's socks, all kinds of cleaning products, laundry detergent, mops, shampoo, body wash, I've seen, um, like, shower puffs locked up, which cost, like, a dollar. Sometimes you walk down a certain aisle and the entire aisle on both sides is fully encased in plexiglass and locked. So the average value of stuff being locked up is, on a lot of these aisles, less than $10. Holder: Amanda says, this new age of retail lockups, where anything and everything is fair game… took off in earnest coming out of the pandemic. Mull: In 2021, I wrote about what I called at the time 'The Great Shoplifting Freakout,' which was this sort of like generalized media panic about what they termed as like increased rates of theft from retail stores. There were like a couple of videos that went viral showing, you know, groups of people rushing into, there was a Nordstrom in California, there are a couple, like, of famous videos of this. And that all got sort of spun into this idea that retailers are at the mercy of the sort of lawless public. And, if you think about what 2021 was like in the US, there was like a real sense of general unease, coming out of the pandemic and people being nervous about going out again and a lot of people got really used to shopping online. So it tapped into this, like, generalized anxiety about the outside world. Holder: Whether this shoplifting panic was backed up by concrete evidence, Amanda says, is another story. Mull: There's not a lot of good data available on theft rates. Often these numbers are released by like, industry lobby groups and people who are trying to demonstrate a phenomenon that they believe is happening from surveys that ask retail management how they feel about shoplifting, how they feel about certain types of product loss as a threat to their business. It is very squishy. Holder: Feelings are a lot different than numbers. Mull: Yes. Yes. They're asking about perception instead of asking for proof. Holder: These stores do keep tabs on what they call 'shrinkage'. Mull: Which is the industry term for inventory that's lost and cannot be sold for any cause. And that can be cargo theft, it can be employee theft, it can be shoplifting, it can be checkout errors, it can be paperwork errors, it can be missed delivery. You get spoilage, damage. Holder: Kind of like the cost of doing business. Mull: Right. You can lose inventory in like a zillion ways. But like over the past like 15 or 20 years, the shrink rate in US retail is like pretty stable. That generally hovers at about 1.5%. So if you are a retailer, on average, you're going to lose about one and a half percent of your sellable inventory to something that is, like, sort of beyond your control. Holder: So that shrink rate hasn't changed much. It's a similar amount of inventory lost over the last few decades. But Amanda says, what has changed is the number of employees stocking the shelves. Mull: Something that's really important to understand about retail stores in the US, especially retailers that sell sort of like low dollar, everyday essential types of things — drugstores, big box stores — is that they are almost entirely like woefully understaffed. It is really hard to staff these stores, because the jobs themselves just aren't very good. They don't pay very well, their hours are not predictable, you're on your feet all day, you may or may not get benefits. So, retailers are understaffed, and over the years, retailers have cut staffing even further. And that is, like, sort of an ideological thing, like, retailers really love to reduce labor costs, and that, after a certain point, just means having fewer workers. So, when you get to that point, it becomes really hard to manage a store well. So what retailers have done is sort of retrofit stores with systems that mean in their minds that they can run a store with fewer employees. That's what self checkout is. And that's what these locked up shelves are. Holder: And that Great Shoplifting Freakout of 2021? Amanda says it just helped justify these sorts of measures. Mull: If retailers can't and won't hire more people, then what they're going to have to do is justify the sort of externalities of these staffing choices. So you lose the essential functions of the store. And more of the labor of running the store is put on the customer. And it's really convenient to have sort of an external threat that has forced you to do these things rather than your own management decisions that has forced you to do these things. Holder: That's so interesting. So, basically, stores stopped hiring people at the same rate, to do the work of actually staffing these stores, helping people with checkout, and keeping an eye on things, making sure people weren't stealing goods. And so, instead of hiring more people, they installed more plexiglass. Mull: Yes. And when you do that, you get some externalities. Holder: Externalities that you're probably familiar with. Mull: You press the button, nobody comes. You press the button again, and, you know, it's been five minutes, ten minutes. You gotta go back to work, you're on your lunch break. You just leave. Holder: Social media is filled with angry customers complaining that locked shelves have ruined their shopping experience: TikTok: It took me 15 minutes to get somebody to come over to like get some laundry soap. TikTok: This turned into like a 30-minute ordeal just to get facial cleanser. Mull: It is one of the fundamental building blocks of, like, modern life in the United States that these stores work. And when they stop working, people get really mad. Holder: Because you want to pop in, get your toothpaste, and leave. Mull: Right, it is a situation in which something that should be easy, something that has been easy for decades becomes totally unworkable. Holder: How have shoppers reacted to these changes? Mull: They've reacted by moving their consumption of these items to a different retailer. So, it's been a boon for grocery stores because a lot of them carry these same goods, and it's been a big boon for online retailers. Holder: It's hurting retail employees too. Who are good at reducing all kinds of shrink. Not just elusive shoplifters, but self-checkout issues and paperwork errors; tracking shipments that arrive with only 19 bars of soap instead of 20. Mull: The retail employees that I've talked to, sort of uniformly hate this system. Your employer is making you run around like a chicken with your head cut off to, like, unlock cabinets of moisturizer or whatever. So you're forcing out people who are your best workers, in most cases, and you're just going to lose product in, like, so many different ways. The store's going to leak like a sieve. Holder: So customers aren't happy, employees aren't happy… and companies' bottom lines are taking a hit too. More on that, and what they're doing about it… after the break. On top of alienating customers and annoying employees… locked up shelves at retail stores have not exactly been good for business. Mull: I think Walgreens and CVS in particular, if you look at their financial results over the past few years, like, it's not been great. They are two companies in a situation where they really do need to figure out how to gain back, um, some customer loyalty and encourage more foot traffic into their stores and things like that. Holder: Amanda says, the first domino to fall was Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth's admission on an earnings call… that this policy had hurt sales– that locking things up made them harder to buy. Wentworth: When you lock things up, for example, you don't sell as many of them. We've kind of proven that, uh, pretty, pretty conclusively. Holder: How big was that, to hear that from him? Mull: It was huge. This is a topic that retailers do not want to talk about because they know that the general public hates this and so hearing a CEO of one of the main culprits in this phenomenon, say like, 'hey, we understand that this is bad, that this is not a benefit to customers, that something's got to give here, that we are turning away shoppers.' It was one of the few, like, rare public acknowledgments that like this system is bad. We got to figure out something else to do here. Holder: In March Walgreens agreed to a sale — it will go private, after years of shrinking profit margins and a volatile stock price. Slumping retail sales didn't help. It's not the only company that's looking closer at its lock-up strategy. A few weeks after that Walgreens earnings call… came news from CVS: Mull: CVS announced that it was expanding a pilot program that it been running quietly in a couple of New York City stores. What it does is allow people with the CVS Health app on their phones to unlock certain cabinets themselves. Holder: Do you think it'll work? Mull: Well, I think that the theory is, that they're going to have your name, your information, like, you are a known quantity to them, so it takes an element of anonymity out of opening those shelves. And could potentially be a way to move the middleman, which is the employee with the big key ring, out of these transactions in a way that, like, helps the store run a little bit more smoothly. Holder: It's not quite removing the locked shelves altogether. But Amanda says, it's essentially a way to walk back the policy and put more control in consumers' hands. Mull: I think that they understand that they have like overcorrected or gone too far in like how these, programs were implemented. And they can't like fully walk them back. Holder: Because it's just too expensive to rip up your work? Mull: It's too expensive and also it signals failure. Like, you have to sort of present to the investing public the idea that, like, oh, like, the numbers aren't great, but this is working, because if you rip all that stuff out, then people have other questions. Holder: CVS appears to be doubling down on its app-based unlock system: a company spokesperson told us they 'plan to introduce it in other communities this year.' On social media, people have raised privacy concerns about the data the app collects… because it requires customers to sign in to use it. CVS said it 'complies with all applicable regulations to protect customer information. For customers who prefer not to scan the app, assistance is available to unlock the merchandise.' So we're not necessarily going to see our locked up socks unleashed overnight. But not because keeping them behind plexiglass is the best way to deter theft. Mull: The best way to deter theft, like this is, has been studied, is to properly staff your stores. To make people who might be thinking about stealing something feel like they're going to be seen, they're going to be caught, that they cannot just go in there undetected and walk out with whatever they want. Holder: What do you think the future of shopping might look like at places where these lockups have been so central? Mull: Stores in that arena are probably going to feel more and more like vending machines. I went to a retail conference recently where like there was a lot of exhibitors with third party vendors that sell like technology solutions for automating more things within stores, that make it possible for a customer to unlock something themselves, that makes it easier to track customers in stores, and identify people that, that do all of this stuff, that seems to be bent toward automating a lot of these things or putting more things on the customer's plate to do themselves. I think there's been like a re-estimation of the value of like a good in store experience in a lot of other types of retailers. And I think this has been a pretty effective cautionary tale because, like, the level of ire and the level of anger that is directed toward retailers that do this, and the level of, like, grudge-holding that people will do against these retailers, I think has been instructive for other retailers to say, all right, we know what not to do. More stories like this are available on
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Big Take: Even Retailers Hate Those Locked Shelves
If you've been to a store like CVS, Walgreens or Target in the last few years, you may have noticed a trend: more and more essentials are locked up behind plexiglass walls. The strategy started as an anti-theft measure. But there's little evidence that it's worked. On today's Big Take podcast, Bloomberg's Amanda Mull takes host Sarah Holder through the causes and consequences of the retail lock-up era — and how it's changed the way we shop.
Atlantic
28-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- Atlantic
Our Writers' Boldest Opinions About Food
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. Atlantic writers have never been afraid to make bold claims about beloved foods and beverages. Hard seltzer? Pretty bad, Amanda Mull argued in 2022. Wraps? The worst kind of sandwich, Ellen Cushing argued this week. Others have stood up for oft-maligned cuisine, like milk chocolate and candy corn. (Every time I publicly express my agreement with my colleague Megan Garber on milk chocolate being better than dark, I get a better understanding of her bravery.) Some of these attempts to revisit what we eat ultimately explore what healthy really means, and why Americans have put so much cultural or social value on certain foods. Today's newsletter explores our writers' most interesting opinions about food and drink. Food Opinions The Worst Sandwich Is Back By Ellen Cushing Wraps are popular again. So is a certain kind of physique. Read the article. Hard Seltzer Has Gone Flat By Amanda Mull Americans are realizing the truth about White Claw: It's bad! Read the article. The Truth About Slushies Must Come Out By Ian Bogost Every slushie is different. Every slushie is the same. Still Curious? The most miraculous—and overlooked—type of milk: Shelf-stable milk is a miracle of food science that Americans just won't drink, Ellen Cushing writes. Let's not fool ourselves about yogurt: There's a thin line between yogurt and ice cream, Yasmin Tayag writes. Other Diversions P.S. I asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. MKT, 78, from Waterford, Connecticut, sent this image of alpenglow over the Jungfrau Massif, from Beatenberg, Switzerland. I'll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
Bloomberg
24-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
ICYMI: Inside Gap's Last-Ditch, Tariff-Addled Turnaround Push
Bloomberg Businessweek Senior Reporter Amanda Mull break down how Gap, the iconic '90s retailer, was on the precipice of death for years. Then CEO Richard Dickson finally had momentum for a comeback— and then came Trump.
