Frequently asked questions

1. Can I see any of the electronic system components?
No. The electronic system is hidden in the shelf.

2. Do honest shoppers get deterred by the removal beep?
No. Around 2000 shoppers were monitored using IMCo Shelf. Only 2% of these had shown uncertainty after the removal beep or asked the staff about the beep. This result was confirmed by interviewing 100 shoppers.

3. Which test results do you have?
A first extensive test was performed at the German drugstore chain dm using colour cosmetics from Max Factor (Procter & Gamble). The results were that stock losses decreased by more than 50% and the sales increased by a double-digit margin.

4. Why have sales increased?
During the trial we experienced no massive theft (“sweeping”) by professional shoplifters. Sweeping by professional shoplifters causes out-of-stocks for a certain period of time. The deterrence of shoplifters reduces out-of-stocks and increases sales.

5. Why should professional thieves be deterred by the system?
Field studies have shown that professional shoplifters steal huge quantities for reselling purposes. Interviews with repeat shoplifters have revealed that even professionals fear incalculable risks. The removal beep already leads to an uncertainty because the shoplifter doesn’t know if there is a camera activated by this. Theft becomes public when the loud acoustic alarm goes off. Other customers are watching and the store staff shows its presence. Even for professional shoplifters this is no comfortable situation.

6. With which products can the unit be used?
Products which are packaged in a box with a width from 40 to 200 mm and a depth of at least 10 mm can be secured. Naturally we have solutions for colour cosmetic products that are presented in product pushers or gravitiy feed and vacuum mold displays. Blisterpacks can be secured with our intelligent product pusher.

7. What about free-standing products?
We are currently completing the development of a sensor foil which is placed on top of the shelf. Connected with our electronics it detects each product removal.

8. Can the unit be manipulated?
Manipulation attempts will be identified by the CPU and will set off a loud acoustic alarm. A monitored test over more than 24 months didn’t show any successful manipulation attempts.

9. How is the ROI?
In the first test the ROI was clearly under 12 months.

10. Does the system need any setup?
No. Your individual parameters will be preinstalled. IMCo Shelf comes ready to use.

11. How long is the expected lifetime of the unit?
We successfully simulated a ten year life cycle.

12. Do you need the IMCo Pager™ to operate the IMCo Shelf™?
No. The pager is useful when the store staff is too far away from the IMCo Shelf™ to hear the alarm. Additionally, the pager displays the shelf name where critical action occures in order that security staff can activate the corresponding CCTV camera.

13. How easy is the installation and the adjustment of the unit?
Very easy, like plug and play. The device has to be connected and the system is ready to use. No engineer is necessary to install of adjust the system.

14. How about merchandising?
The system can be switched off for merchandising by using a key. It will automatically switch on again after 30 minutes.

15. When is the system available?
The system is readily available and in operation in Europe and North America. We have solutions for the leading colour cosmetics suppliers. We got the expertise to customize IMCo Shelf™ for almost all possible presentation techniques.

16. Is there a contact in North America?                                          Our North American partner is Intelligent Loss Prevention (www.intelligentlossprevention.com) a division of Southern Imperial, Inc.

17. Can RFID do the same job?
Not quite. To begin with: RFID is not really available at pack-level. Furthermore, there are a number of reasons why RFID is not as effective:

• RFID tags can be easily manipulated.

• Our system reads activities every 2.5 ms. RFID does this only every 10 seconds or so. Too late to stop theft at the shelf.

• And then there are the costs. One needs quite a number of antennas and computing power to monitor a complete shelf. This costs far more than the IMCo Shelf™.