“The big shift was just led by the growth in online shopping.” The demand for product online skyrocketed, and as a result, so too did the demand for stolen product,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s still about supply and demand. Since then, criminals have been making greater use of online channels not only to perpetrate crimes but to liquidate their stolen merchandise. Part of that was driven by a giant leap to online shopping since the shutdowns in March 2020, says Tony Sheppard, director of loss prevention solutions at ThinkLP. More than two-thirds of retailers said the pandemic increased the overall risk for their organization, according to NRF’s 2021 National Retail Security Survey, and 57 percent indicated a rise in ORC.

ORC was on the rise before 2020, but the societal changes and shift to digital from the pandemic have led to an increase in the problem. Organized retail crime now costs retailers an average of $700,000 per $1 billion in sales, and three-fourths of retailers saw an increase in ORC in 2020, according to NRF’s 2020 Organized Retail Crime Survey. Listen to one of NRF's latest Retail Gets Real episodes on preventing organized retail crime.

The very organised thief online