Gary Sankary (00:00)
these cameras are loaded with sensors. They’ve got heat sensors. They’ve got ⁓ audio, you know, if I hear a voice in a warehouse at two in the morning, it alerts me. ⁓ and AI can now interpret the behaviors of individuals as they’re walking around, you know, who are the people that are just walking by the store and who are

Shelley E. Kohan (00:46)
Hi everybody. Welcome to our weekly podcast. I’m Shelly Cohan and I’m very excited to welcome back Gary Sankary from Esri Retail. He’s the retail leader, so he’s in charge of all things retail, which I love.

Gary Sankary (01:02)
I am a I I it is my ⁓ where I come from, so it’s good to be with to soar with your strengths, as they say.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:10)
I love it. So today we have a very rich conversation. There’s a lot happening. we’re gonna talk a lot about asset protection, retail threats, the future of loss prevention. And also, I’d love for you to kind of give us a sneak preview of what’s gonna happen at NRF Protect this year, because that’s always in June. It’s coming up next week. ⁓ so let’s do a little bit of a future read on what that is gonna look like this year. So that would be great. So, you know.

retail crime is a big topic of conversation and it’s just keeps growing and growing. We have organized retail crime that is not just a financial problem, but safety, community, ⁓ policy crisis. So I’d love to kind of get your kind of overview. ⁓ I think it’s rising, which is not a good thing, but maybe you can kind of give us a brief overview of what direction ⁓ retail crime is headed in.

Gary Sankary (02:03)
Yeah. you know what we’re really seeing, Shelley, is a rise of you know, when we talk about organized retail crime, we’re seeing the old days of the shoplifter coming in and taking a few things for personal use while that still happens compared to the losses and the risks that we’re experiencing from these organized gangs and these are really sophisticated groups that are involved in everything from you know

Mass theft for fencing operations to cargo theft all across the enterprise. Every retailer needs to be concerned about what these gangs are up to and how they’re infiltrating their enterprise and how they’re impacting not just their profitability, but also the safety of their customers and their guests and the and their employees.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:51)
Yeah, and I think that unfortunately that aspect, the ORC as we call it, organized retail crime, is actually on the rise ⁓ and growing and it’s becoming more sophisticated. So every time we, the community of retailers, get sophisticated in loss prevention ⁓ abilities, ⁓ the thieves also are getting more progressive as well, right?

Gary Sankary (03:14)
Yeah, I mean I and I’ve started thinking about this is it’s kind of like a chronic disease that you’re you’re never gonna actually cure it, but you can keep react as the disease morphs, we have to keep morphing to stay on top of it and keep mitigating its impact.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:30)
Yeah, and I think some of the numbers that I’ve read is that, you know, ⁓ ORC specifically is, you know, north of a hundred and fifty billion dollars per year, something like that. Right. And when we look at the tax implications, you know, that’s like over fifteen billion a year. So missed revenue from taxes. I don’t I don’t know if those are the ⁓ actual numbers. That’s what I have, but

Gary Sankary (03:54)
Yeah, I typically use the NRF numbers and ⁓ I think you’re right in

Shelley E. Kohan (04:00)
Yeah, that’s the same numbers I use too. So tell us a little bit about what’s happening with ORC, what what what areas are really growing, what areas have we been able to reduce crime in?

Gary Sankary (04:10)
Well, so honestly, the most important thing from an ORC standpoint and it is it is growing and we get that sense. Actually, you know, the thing that I thought was most tragic from the from the reports from ⁓ NRF were about the sentiment of store team members, especially frontline team members, and I think it was out I think it was ninety percent of them said they had situations in the store that they did not feel safe. And, you know, this is that

you know, I I’ve been in retail for fifty years and that and I I certainly did my time in the stores. I never can remember a time when I didn’t specifically feel like I was you know, I that my safety was at risk and now that’s become a huge deal. So in addition to the losses, and the way that I think from a from a you know, what are what are retails doing? What what can we do to really solve this, it’s really we have to develop and and we are working on this. ⁓

an infrastructure around ORC that involves con first thing you gotta do is you gotta be able to attribute what is actually ORC. And that there’s a lot of things we do around things like entity resolution to be able you know, the ORC guys operate in an environment where they expect us to look at each of their attacks individually as if it was, you know, one store, one off, right? And a lot of retailers that continue to do that

don’t realize are actually the victims of something much more nefarious. And I think being able to share data across jurisdictions, across you know, even you know, the silo issues inside of a a retail organization, especially if they’re if their APLP organizations are organized around s specific stores and they look at it that way, they may miss really what’s going on, which is a crew is hitting every one of their stores going down

Shelley E. Kohan (05:41)
Mm.

Gary Sankary (06:07)
interstate and that’s really a vulnerability that the ORC teams are ⁓ exploiting and their hope is that we continue to do that. One of the things that you know we’re doing from a GIS standpoint and from ⁓ is being able to connect the dots on some of those seemingly unrelated events. And that’s gonna help with your prosecution. It’s gonna help to attribute greater losses to actual individuals, which is gonna help from a

You know, if I need to escalate to different levels of law enforcement, there’s a you know, it’s and it helps me also organize my resources of where I may want to harden my stores and what stores to harden based on the patterns of the behavior that are happening from these various crews.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:49)
That’s interesting. Your technology is used by law enforcement, right? SRI, yeah.

Gary Sankary (06:52)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

⁓ absolutely. I mean if you think most jurisdictions in the United States have an operation center. And actually a lot of our retailers, especially the tier ones, also operate very similar type of operation centers where all of their assets are on a map. They can see, you know, if you think about so think about your town

If you went into the police station you could see where the cars are, you could see where the calls are coming from, you can see where their officers are, all of those different types of assets. Now take that for an enterprise and replace the ⁓ cars with your stores, with your trucks, with your d distribution centers. Even nowadays, you know, as we make more advances, ⁓ you know, some of the work that, you know, GS one is doing to get down to item specific barcodes, you can see all of these assets

within the context of a s of of space and ⁓ and of and within location technology can really help you to understand, you know, that’s what you’re we’re trying to get the patterns. That’s the most important thing to fight ORC. Because these guys also, if something works, they’re very likely to keep exploiting that as long as it’s working. I s I would tell people, you know, and I had this conversation, your chances of stopping the first one are

Shelley E. Kohan (07:55)
Mm-hmm.

Gary Sankary (08:12)
Okay, but if you can learn from that, the second one improves significantly. And that’s really what they’ve got to be able to do is connect all those dots.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:22)
And are you able to? So one of the things I’ve always really respected about the retail community, ⁓ and this is functionally regarding loss prevention asset protection, is there’s a lot of clo cross-collaboration between companies. So, unlike merchandising and buying or retail operations, we don’t really share our secrets, but in on the LP asset protection side.

Gary Sankary (08:39)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:44)
You’ll have different companies working with other companies. So are you able, when you talk about connecting the dots, are you able to cross-collaborate with different retailers, not just store locations, but actually different retailers?

Gary Sankary (08:58)
So that’s kind of evolving to be honest with you. I don’t think it’s as robust as the retailers or even law enforcement. But think there’s a hierarchy that we see. I mean, f for some retailers, Shelley, to be honest, just collaborating across stores and and across whatever their geographic hierarchy might be is a challenge. ⁓ but then being able to share that data with law enforcement, right? And in a way that law enforcement can consume it. So one of the things that, you know, we’ve been seeing is the

you know, with the federal ORC coordination ⁓ activities that are happening. If we can standardize that data, and this is something that, you know, Dr. Reed Hayes at the LPRC has been working on for a long and he he’s been talking about this a lot about how do we put standard attributes around criminal activity because that’s how I can normalize that data. And then when I’m sharing something with

Shelley E. Kohan (09:38)
yes.

Gary Sankary (09:53)
law enforcement, they’re going to be getting it in a way that they understand it and consume us doesn’t have my own it’s right. And quite frankly, I think the model, I think it’s kind of like a in the in the world of, you know, quaw crawl, walk, run, we’re somewhere probably between crawl and walk to get sharing really across enterprise level at the at the ⁓ retail for different retailers. ⁓ but I do think it’s coming and I think it’ll probably come through law enforcement.

Shelley E. Kohan (09:58)
Right.

Gary Sankary (10:23)
might come through a FUCSIS center, which is a law enforcement, you know, where they’re gonna actually set up a clearinghouse for all of this information. But I also think there’s a practical aspect. So if you’re in you know if you’re in a big shopping center and a known bad actor hits your store, for most of these guys, you know, they would love to be able to t especially if especially when we’re talking about the single most important thing, which is the safety of our ⁓ customers and our employees. So if somebody’s

doing something nefarious and I just and I’m in I’m in my store A B C and I need to call the competitor acros I gotta go look it up. you know, I don’t even have the ability to do that, right? I don’t have a great way to do that. I can get to the in the best world I can get to the police in relatively real time. But even just telling them, hey, a guy with a g with a weapon is heading across the parking lot to your store, I mean that’s just ⁓ you know, that’s just being a good neighbor. And I think

Shelley E. Kohan (11:02)
That’s true. Right, right, right.

Gary Sankary (11:21)
You’re right, there has been discussion and and we do share some things, but it’s not to the level that needs to be yet. And I think ORC is really gonna drive a lot of that. Because these these ORC crews, too, they’re not we’re only we only hit Target. We don’t go to any other store. That’s not how they work. They’re ORC groups, if you think about these, you know, they operate like a retailer in a way. They have their own ROI measurements. You know, they wanna steal stuff that they can sell quickly.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:46)
Yeah.

Gary Sankary (11:49)
That they can sell easily, that isn’t easily traceable. They know what they’re looking for and the fact that and they know where it’s concentrated. So, you know, they they don’t want to do a bunch of one-offs that are expensive and risky. They want to hit up get a big haul at this store, and if it’s a different brand across the parking lot, go get over there and then get out of the area before law enforcement has the time to re- has the time.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:54)
Yeah.

Well, first of all I wanna thank you and applaud your efforts because I believe you’re on the is it the Loss Prevention Retail Council? Did I say that correctly? Yeah, so thank you for all your work.

Gary Sankary (12:21)
We are. We are members, yeah. Yeah, so we spend a lot of time with

those guys. Yeah, it’s it’s a great organization and much like Internet Protect, it’s really you know, there’s the f it’s the neat thing about this space, and I’m coming for merchandising. I was ⁓ in store planning and did the planograms and all that kind of stuff for a long time. ⁓

cool thing about this or this community is it’s pretty tight knit so I tend to see the same people, but they’re all focused on, you know, there’s there’s really it’s very mission based, which I think is kind of refreshing, especially in the retail world. You know, going back to protect my s protect my assets but protect my people and ⁓ the people

Shelley E. Kohan (13:00)
Yeah, for sure. And I know that what you described about all this cross collaboration and law enforcement, two things come to mind. The infrastructure is required. So I know that’s a big lift to have the back of house infrastructure in place to do that. And the other thing I never thought about, but as soon as you said it, I’m like, of course, is we have our own retail jargon that we use. It’s like a foreign language. And so translating that to, you know, law enforcement does require a bit of thought.

Gary Sankary (13:25)
Yeah.

I mean the the most confusing one for anybody not in retail and a lot of people in retail just shrink. You know, we use the we throw that term around, shrink was X, and then we assume it was all theft. But y you know, that is absolutely not the case. So we I think we need to do a better job too of defining what are actually losses due to criminal activity versus what is spoilage versus damage for you know, all the different things that contribute to ⁓ inventory shortage.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:33)
Yeah.

So all right, so let’s move on. One of the things I want to ask you about, so last year smash and grabs were all over the news. They were I it’s just horrible for associates, the frontline workers. ⁓ what’s what what’s happening with smash and grabs? Are they going up? Are they going down?

Gary Sankary (14:11)
⁓ I don’t have statistics on the frequency, but I can tell you what we’re where we’re helping and what I think can be done about it. And I think really the amount of data these days that is available for retailers to analyze, you know, we’re we wanna be able to harden our stores, but we wanna be able to harden the right stores and we also need to do it in a way that doesn’t introduce friction for the guest, right? ‘Cause we have green actors in our stores and we have red actors.

And I think from the smash and grab it’s really about looking at risk assessment here. And it’s looking at from my perspective, if I can bring all of this different type of data, and this is where the secret sauce of GIS comes in, is the ability to bring in disparate data, so crime generators in a community, w things like bars and liquor stores and all the things that you know, you don’t wanna if I don’t have to go to them at ten o’clock at night I don’t

⁓ and transportation corridors and freeways and all you know, and it’s it’s you know, we’re way past the days w from think about the one in the one that I always think about the poster child is the attack on Nordstroms in Walnut Creek, California. And, you know, what we learned from that, the attributes that made that an attractive spot were contrary to what you would think of in the old days when I thought about, hey, this is one this is a

store I need to harden. It’s in a great neighborhood, right? It’s got it’s got it’s a s safe community. It has great access to freeways. I can get right on the highway. ⁓ as soon as I leave downtown Walnut Creek, I kind of ⁓ I get back out to I think it’s eight eighty. I it’s been a while since I’ve been out there. But anyways, all of those things we learn when we see those attacks, but those get if you can institutionalize that

those attributes then become factors for scoring your risk in other locations. So rather than just saying, Hey, I’m in a really challenged part of town, which is a high cr which is a legitimate concern, you’re also looking at these crews are moving around. This type of crew is looking for a store that’s not well prote you know, where maybe police response times are slower because they just don’t have the manpower or maybe they know what time of day is gonna be most efficient. These guys hit right a closing when people are thinking about something other than, you know,

you know, the the all of those different attributes. So to to the smash and grab in particular, it’s again, it’s the same old story, but it applies across all of these different types of crime. It’s about finding those patterns and then d allocating the resources to be able to to mitigate

Shelley E. Kohan (16:52)
The other piece on the smash and grabs, which kind of is an interesting piece of it, is a lot of manufacturers now are putting RFID into sp particular ⁓ products. So in the price tag, in the garment that’s sewn in there. And so the ability to if you, you know, take a tho you know, a hundred jeans off of a shelf and you throw them in a trunk of a car, you know, you do have the ability in some cases to track where the car is going, right?

Gary Sankary (17:06)
Yep, exactly.

Well, you tracking where the car’s going, I don’t wanna oversell what they can do because that’s requ that’s gonna require that your RFID tags are sending out a signal. But what they can do if you think but but you are right on track, Shelley, because if I there was a great c actually ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (17:29)
⁓ yeah.

Gary Sankary (17:40)
American Eagle talked about this where they had the FBI found a hundred or two hundred pairs of jeans. Because they had RFID tags and embedded in those t in those garments, first of all, law enforcement can have a scanner too, right? And as soon as they scan those items, because of the work that organizations like GS one have done, they can say, Hey, stolen st they know the pedigree of the item. This has been stolen. And not only

Did they realize that it wasn’t just taken from one warehouse? These garments came from thirty-five different stores up and down the East Coast. And ⁓ that kind of information is what exactly what prosecutors need for search warrants to execute and also for prosecution. And I think as a result of that, ⁓ they found millions more in stolen merchandise because they were able to track this thing back to, you know, where these guys were holding.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:35)
That’s amazing. Wow, good for them. yeah, I know I know a lot of res retailers now are finally ⁓ implementing the RFID tags in a lot of merchandise, especially if they’re vertically integrated or producing their own ⁓ products. So the other thing that you always talk about, Gary, is you talk about there’s the technology, but there’s also the human strategies. So can you talk a little bit about the balancing act between the two? And I’m sure you’re using AI and have been for many years.

Gary Sankary (19:03)
from the human aspect, you know, that’s really about again, it starts with a good risk profile, right? And trying to understand ⁓ if you look at a surface, you know, a simple heat map was probably the first way I ever saw this done, which is hey, heat map, this store gets hit a lot, these stores around here get hit, that’s an important place. If you take that same heat map now and apply different metrics to it.

like amplitude, how much was taken. So if I took a heat map of retail crime in Walnut Creek, ⁓ if I did it by incidence, I might see one blip where the Nordstrom was. If I did it by if I then added volume to see how much, you’re gonna be able to really see these are where these guys are actually going. And we haven’t done this quite yet, but I also anticipate that if I look at this temporally over time, I would imagine there’s a different pattern in

thefts and attacks around the holidays than there are the rest of the year, right? One of the slow seasons who gets impacted and where I’m going with this is all of us are strapped for resources. We only have so much resources. So from a human standpoint, we only ha you know, we’re gonna deploy those where they’re where they’re ⁓ where I can get the biggest bang for my buck when it comes to the mitigation. But the other piece I think that’s really helping is we’ve seen so much of the processing and the

analysis or the the capturing of data getting pushed out to devices. So if you think about C C T V, right? In the good old days, ⁓ I just had a camera, but if I wanted to see something at you know, how many T V shows did you see? Well roll back the tape and they’ll sit there and watch the tape. Now Yeah, exactly.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:49)
I’ve lived it.

In my retail career. Yeah, absolutely.

Gary Sankary (20:54)
But now

these cameras are loaded with sensors. They’ve got heat sensors. They’ve got ⁓ audio, you know, if I hear a voice in a warehouse at two in the morning, it alerts me. ⁓ and AI can now interpret the behaviors of individuals as they’re walking around, you know, who are the people that are just walking by the store and who are

Can I sort of determine that? And can you know, what it’s doing is it’s it’s really ⁓ extending the ability of the loss prevention

acid protection teams to be able to anticipate where things might

Shelley E. Kohan (21:29)
Unbelievable. No, that’s great because once you kind of can get this idea of actors and behaviors, you can then kind of pinpoint it better, which is great in terms of prevention for sure.

Gary Sankary (21:39)
Yeah.

And I would and I’d you know, I know I’m I work for Esri, but I would argue that having that spatial piece to be able to know where this stuff happens is really what makes this what pulls it all together. I mean I we’re gonna go into ⁓ NRF Protect and you know, I’ve been talking a lot about a united a unified sensor platform. So what we’ve got in the market today, when you walk ⁓ if are you gonna be there by the way? That’d be it’d be awesome.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:09)
I I wish I could, but my son’s graduating, so I will not be there. So I will be at his graduation.

Gary Sankary (22:11)
Okay.

That’s where you should be. Good for you. But

you’ll see, you know, when I go to NRF Protect, you can kind of divvy up the floor. There’s a lot of different types of sensors. There’s can like I said, there’s cameras and license plate readers and facial recognition and all of that kind of technology that retailers have access to. There’s another set of vendors there who are looking at different hardening and you know, this is the ⁓ the plastic boxes at your

drugstore that make it impossible to buy deodorant, you that kind of stuff. Or ⁓ and then you’ll also see the folks like us who are doing this who are the software, this entity resolution to the case managements, ⁓ trying to really find patterns in this. And I think what’s unique from a from you know we if you go back to that operations center, when you look at that, all those different

devices on the map, you’re looking at a feed of a lot of different types of sensors with different types of data, but I can see it in one spot and if I click on something and a camera feed pops up, that’s g that, you know, I’ve just that’s been a game changer to be able to do that sort of thing. And that’s I think to really set up a and mitigate a organized retail or any type of activity like that. And not just that, I would also argue that, you know, not argue. I think it’s

Shelley E. Kohan (23:29)
Wow.

Gary Sankary (23:41)
It’s a safety issue as well. So, you know, it’s not just somebody stealing from your store, it’s the customer who has a medical emergency and you didn’t and you know, you catch it on a tape and you’re able to direct ⁓ resources to that person to get them to help them with whatever they might need. And there’s customer service impact too, you know. Hey, that NCAP is empty and that’s got my best selling item on it. Let’s get something over there. There’s there’s a lot of different places you can go, but really from a asset protection loss prevention standpoint.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:44)
Yeah.

That’s amazing.

Gary Sankary (24:10)
I think that is at its core really what we need what they need to be able to ⁓ to understand is have that have that view that allow because the map is gonna ground their analyst to where this stuff is actually happening and crime happens in a place for a reason.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:29)
Ан Езрега технології тоді.

Gary Sankary (24:32)
We have the maps and we have the ability to consume the data from ⁓ any kind of sensor that they might have to bring it into that. And we can then apply the spatial analysis too to create that hot spot or to create to do the knowledge graph to be able to see we’ve had six of the similar events in this particular area. What would that what does that indicate?

Shelley E. Kohan (24:53)
That’s great. So I want to go back to something you said about service because this has kind of been a lot has been written about this and it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. I I just don’t deal with it. I walk away because I don’t want to deal with it. But this, you know, this whole thing about the deodorant being locked up and the, you know, five dollar, like I had to call someone to get a, you know, really cheap makeup item in a drugstore once, and it’s like, I don’t have time for this. So what is the you know, how how are we gonna deal with it? You can’t lock up the whole store.

Gary Sankary (25:03)
Ha ha.

That’s right.

Yeah, I think that’s really where going back to the risk scoring and risk assessment comes into play. And I think you’ve gotta I’ve if I’m ⁓ you know, if I’m making those decisions, I have to now, the problem is, quite frankly, like with the deodorant, yeah, it was a it’s a two dollar and seventy five cent item. But it’s also a brand name that can be fenced really, really quickly. And these guys aren’t taking the one bottle, they’re taking the entire shelf, right? And so

⁓ but if I can sort of anticip if I can, you know, maybe not every store needs to be hardened in the same way. Or maybe stores that are particularly high volume, I have maybe it’s worth it to have an associate back there because a person in a aisle is gonna do more than a locked box, I guarantee it. You know, maybe it’s about a customer service and that’s something retailers I think they’re they’ve they kind of debate because they you know, we really want everything to be self service.

⁓ you know, and they’re looking at their headcount as an expense, but I think, you know, maybe a reassessment to say, you know, based on what I know from my analytics and based on where this location is and what time it is and where things are happening, maybe between these hours it’s worth it to pay somebody to actually, you know, do their work in that aisle or in these high risk areas. You know, another thing, you know, we think about too is ⁓ the way they’re gonna get to that is through some indoor mapping, right, which we

Think about all these capabilities I’ve been talking about at a macro level. They’re also available inside the store. And ⁓ you know, that was something, you know, that was near and dear to my heart doing when I did planograms and store layouts. We were doing it from a maximize the ROI. So, you know, I spent enough time at Target to, you know, I I don’t know how many times I’ve debated milk in the back or milk in the front. You know, that was a classic retail ⁓ discussion. But

Shelley E. Kohan (27:13)
Yeah.

Gary Sankary (27:19)
What if I then took that and said, Okay, here’s my camera configuration, where are my dead zones? Because the crazy thing is the bad guys know where those dead zones are. Right? And where are they that’s gonna be the place where they’re gonna load up their garment with something or where they might start a little fire to get the A P team distracted while they’re walking out with the expensive stuff in the front of the store. And the retailers get soup and this is a reaction to just being frustrated. I mean there’s nothing

You know, if if you’re in retail there’s nothing you hate to see more than somebody picking up a bunch of stuff and walking out the front door with it, right? That’s all of your it’s really an attack on you personally when you’re in the store.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:00)
Definitely and it definitely it has a ripple impact all the way down.

You know, like I mentioned earlier, you know, the refencing, the reselling, not getting the tax money off of it, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a huge ripple effect. Everyone should be concerned about it. ⁓ in our industry, as well as our consumers should be concerned about as well from a safety perspective, and also from the perspective of they’re not going to be able to buy merchandise that’s stolen, and they’re not their towns and communities aren’t going to get the tax revenues from the sales of those items that are being stolen.

Gary Sankary (28:05)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s you’re absolutely right. Like it goes back to our opening discussion. This is no longer just somebody ripping off a little something because they can’t afford it or they want it or they you know, they’re just have that mentality. This is a this is an organized, concentrated effort to build a revenue stream use you know, you I would call this the dark supply chain to be honest. This is a you know, they have their own way to get their product. Case in point, go out to

social media site that has a marketplace, whichever one you like, and look for something like crest white strips, that’s a good one. And you see people selling hey I just accidentally bought four cases and they’re all for sale and by the way, if this isn’t the brand you like, send me a I am and I’ll you know, I might have others, you know, you know we know exactly where that’s coming from.

Shelley E. Kohan (29:21)
Unbelievable. Okay, so let’s talk about so two things I always look forward to every year. ⁓ one is the NRF. they do their they changed the name of it, the security survey. ⁓ I forget what it’s called, but the big survey they put out every year that talks about all the statistics from the year previous. So I’m looking forward to that. Usually it comes out in June or later on in the year for the ⁓ year before. And the other thing is NRF Protect. So tell us.

Gary Sankary (29:41)
Yeah.

I was gonna say I get

my highlighter out for that report, so that that is a good one. But yeah, InterF Protect is a great show. I’ve you know, you and I I’ll tell you, you and I chatted at the big show and ⁓ you know, that was fun and the big show certainly has its charms, but you know, I’m there with forty thousand of my closest friends and it’s just you know, my head spins. And it’s everything. What I really like about Protect, this is a really focused group, right? This is ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (30:01)
Yes.

Yeah.

Gary Sankary (30:19)
You know, this is the this is retailers and law enforcement and legislatures and we’re really and you know, they’re all focused on one mission. I’d argue that mission is keeping stores and employees safe, ⁓ with the additional of protecting our profits and protecting our product. But everybody you know, every retailer I talk to, that’s the first thing I always hear from their AP teams. I need to keep my employees and my and my customers safe. And this is and you know, that

Shelley E. Kohan (30:45)
Absolutely.

Gary Sankary (30:49)
I know we get we’ll get in discussions about you know, ⁓ if you see somebody steal something, we get back, you steal some you know, we don’t want people stopping cust criminals when they’re stealing stuff, right? And that really feels counterintuitive, especially if you’re on the L P team. But ⁓ anyways, I just think, you know, here it when you go to something like Protect and you get to have these discussions with these people who are first of all it’s a fairly small community so

Shelley E. Kohan (31:05)
No. Yeah.

Gary Sankary (31:17)
tend to be you know, you see a lot of the same folks, but we’re all just kind of this focus on ⁓ this mission that I think is really encouraging.

Shelley E. Kohan (31:26)
I’m definitely gonna go next year for sure. So what do you what session or topic are you most looking forward to this year?

Gary Sankary (31:33)
Alright, so Esri has a topic where we’re gonna be talking about ⁓

Building how these maps, you know, we’re working with ⁓ Doctor Reed Hayes is gonna be ⁓ talking with us and we’re gonna talk about what they’re doing with their safe spaces, which is a really interesting piece of work that they’re doing to build maps that are bringing in crime generators but also looking at transportation, all the different things that we’ve talking about and how retailers can build that out to help to score. ⁓

I’m also looking forward to talking to retailers about this concept of a unified sensor platform. because I think a lot of them yeah, they they we they you know it’s amazing to me we still see people who are triaging events on a spreadsheet and, you know, being able to just take that information, you know, and throw it on a map. Even in just that heat map, which, you know, I’m I’m years behind that. But if you’ve never even seen that and looked at your crime and all of a sudden you see

Shelley E. Kohan (32:11)
That sounds amazing.

Yeah.

Gary Sankary (32:34)
Wow, all of my crime seems to be happening within a, you know, within the five minutes of a freeway. Well, hmm, that’s, you know, there’s we go back to where are you gonna harden your stores and where can you not? That might be a place to start. You know, it’s it opens up a lot of eyes when people can see that spatially.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:54)
I I love the unified sensor matic or unified ⁓ sap for sensor platform because it kind of reminds me of memory UPC back in the day. Now that was before my time, but UPC before it rolled out, we wanted a common, you know, UPC code or something that, you know, retailers could use. So I kind of liken it to that a bit.

Gary Sankary (32:58)
Sensor platform, yeah.

Well I

PCs, but I’m you know I’ve been around. But I’ll tell you what was really you know, UPCs you know and RFID was like this too. For a long time, RFID was kind of that hammer looking for a nail and even in my time at Target people, you gotta get to this It’s like, man, I’m gonna have to pay five bucks a ticket to a tag for you know, for a ⁓ and it just didn’t go anywhere. But now I think a couple of things. The our ability to consume and analyze

Shelley E. Kohan (33:39)
That’s all right.

Gary Sankary (33:50)
the amount of data that we can now mean and and the idea that we can now take UPC codes and take them down to specific items, right? So if you think about a Dyson vacuum, the fact that Dyson tags those things down to the individual item and if something gets stolen and a officer just s scans that item and sends it to Dyson and says, Yep, that’s hot, right? ⁓ and you think about all the fronts where people sell these things and, you know, I’ve been through the

RFID lab down at Auburn and you know, the days of scanning with a gun are you know, that’s old news now. I can just walk through with a reader and it picks up every tag in the building. It’s gonna really change dramatically how how we number one identify stolen merchandise, which is a big part of it. And then again, when I start to bring all that into a spatial context, being able to see where it’s coming from can help me s go after it at the source.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:46)
Well, Gary, thank you so much for all the work that you and ⁓ your company is doing to help protect the employees, help protect the customers, and also help reduce this. And thank you for the work you’re doing on the loss prevention ⁓ retail council as well. So we appreciate all that. And I hope you have a great event.

Gary Sankary (35:05)
Yeah, it’s exc it’s ⁓

I’m looking forward to it. This is this is one of the fun ones that we get to do.

Shelley E. Kohan (35:11)
So thank you. But thanks for being here and thanks for always spending time with me. I appreciate it.

Gary Sankary (35:13)
All right.

⁓ my pleasure. Thanks. Bye, Shelley.