Cart Loss Prevention System Benefits Harmon’s Bottom Line

Harmons Grocery, a 16-store independent in Salt Lake City, has reported significant benefits to its bottom line linked to loss prevention solutions from San Diego-based Carttronics.

The retailer has implemented Carttronics’ push-out-prevention, hand-basket protection, cart inventory management, loss prevention video capture and remote system monitoring applications at five locations and will install the solutions at a sixth store shortly.

“The Carttronics technology and solutions have directly and positively impacted our bottom-line,” said Frank Lundquist, VP of store development at Harmons. “Carttronics excels in areas of innovative technologies and solutions, implementation support and lifetime cost of operation. They also have great programs for self-maintenance and spare parts, design, construction and installation support, regulatory compliance and provide flexibility in the solutions available on their network platform.”

With its recent growth, Harmons experienced challenges related to shrink, cart loss and retrieval expenses, cart conditions, repair and availability. The Harmons team wanted a long-term, sustainable solution to stop both actual and anticipated increase in lost carts, minimize retrieval and replacement expense, combat growing shrink, provide adequate cart supply and reduce store personnel expense in cart collection and management.

Carttronics solutions were implemented at an initial Harmons location in May 2011. Since that time, the store has seen reduced capital spending, lower operating expenses, a cart retention rate of 99 percent, reduced time devoted to cart retrieval, reduced shoplifting and more shoplifter apprehensions. The company has also increased its business intelligence capabilities, which have proven invaluable to optimizing cart fleet sizes.