The annual price tag of retail crime in Europe is €35 billion.
However, the true cost isn’t measured in euros. It’s the shop worker threatened with a knife, or the colleague who’s punched for asking a customer to pay. In France alone, an estimated €5 billion in products is stolen from retailers each year, yet only 70,000 crime events are reported to police. The violence behind those figures goes even less reported.
Retailers are making crucial decisions about store security, loss prevention and employee safety without understanding the true scale of the problem across their stores.
The challenge for retailers using methods such as ‘walls of shame’, USB sticks, legacy databases and unofficial chat groups to document crime is that information is fragmented, making it impossible to identify repeat offenders and time-consuming to retrieve digital evidence.
Repeat and organised offenders are often not loyal to one store or location, which is why tech-enabled structured crime reporting as part of a broader retail network is key to connecting the dots to those causing the most harm.
Many of the largest retailers around the world use Auror - the leading global retail crime intelligence platform - to record crime in their stores after it occurs, better collaborate with law enforcement on higher-quality evidence, and create safer stores for all.
What we know to be true in every country we operate in is that retailers using Auror find that the top 10% of offenders are responsible for around 70% of retail crime, and repeat offenders are four times more likely to be violent or aggressive towards colleagues and customers
This intelligence gives retailers the full picture of the problem, and the context they need to respond. Importantly, Auror’s platform is designed to help retailers protect personal information, stay in control of their own data, and meet their privacy obligations, including those set out in GDPR.
In the UK, retailers using Auror have reduced the rate of violence in their stores by more than 20% since last year thanks to better intelligence and more effective security decisions. Collaboration with police is also more targeted and effective. In London, high quality retailer-provided evidence shared has helped police quadruple the rate of charges and arrests for retail crime offences compared to legacy reporting methods.
Learn more about Auror at the upcoming Tech for Retail conference in Paris. Drop by Booth Z53 from November 30 to December 1, 2026, at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
