Ever walked into your local corner store and been frustrated seeing the shampoo, deodorant, razors and electronics you want to buy under lock and key? Rousing an employee from behind the register task to unlock your deodorant is a major hassle but it’s part of a wider push by retailers to crack down on organized retail crime. Even though many of the products locked up seem trivial they are ‘hot’ goods, which provide retailers with profitability. In recent years, the issue of retail theft has skyrocketed due to the emergence of eCommerce, which gives bad actors a relatively anonymous mechanism for resale.
As a result, there is an important use case for locking up products on the retail floor. However, while this tactic greatly reduces the theft of important items, it can reduce sales by anywhere from 15 to 25 percent. Paco Underhill, the founder and CEO of behavioral research and consulting firm Envirosell, said in an interview with CNN: “It’s extremely discouraging to customers… It is a brutal experience for the merchant, too.” New retail technologies such as less obtrusive cases that employees can open via smartphone provide a potential solution for the drop in sales.
In other news, LG has just announced the release of its newest CineBeam projectors: The HU915QE and the HU915QB. The UST projectors can broadcast 90-inch images in 4K quality from just 2.2 inches from the wall and 120-inch wide images from a meager 7.2 inches from the wall. The devices also offer AirPlay 2 support, Bluetooth and screen mirroring. The HU915QE is going for a hefty $6,000, while the more advanced HU915QB is going for an even loftier $6,500.
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