Walgreens Employees Replace Perfumes With Printed Images to Stop Thieves

Walgreens employees have turned to printing out perfume images to prevent the shoplifting of display bottles, just months after the company revealed a 52 percent increase in shrink due to theft, fraud and damages.

Beauty consultant Claudia Fiorella shared her attempt to prevent shoplifting using an innovative technique. Along with a fellow employee, Fiorella printed images of the available perfume bottles, replacing the real ones on the locked shelves.

"So all of our perfumes keep getting stolen," she explained in a viral video with over 900,000 views. "We had to put them in the back so Ashley and I Googled each image, now we're cutting it out. This is dedication."

The pair printed off images of the perfume bottles and made stands for each to prop up in an attempt to look like the real deal and "stand up all cutesy."

According to Fiorella, although the perfumes are stored in a locked cupboard, a shoplifter stole the key from another Walgreens store. Since they all use the same lock, the key worked on multiple stores' cupboards.

"It all started when someone stole the key to the perfume case," Fiorella told Newsweek. "They were going around to all the Walgreens unlocking the cases and wiping out our perfume. We felt that it was safest to put them in the back, so we could get them when a customer needed one. I put the pictures out there so customers could see the product, since corporate has not sent us new locks yet.

"It's actually worked very well so far. Customers can actually see what the perfume looks like inside the box, since we've never had testers," she said.

"The customers really like it as well and it's a good presentation of the products. I'm sure once corporate send us new locks that we will put the perfume bottles back in the case."

Shoplifting has become an increasingly pressing issue for Walgreens in particular, who recently shared that it saw an increase in the loss of inventory due to shoplifting, vendor fraud, employee theft, and administrative error over the past year, and is in fact "absorbing a 52 percent increase in shrink."

As reported by Insider, Walgreens Boots Alliance CFO James Kehoe told investors on a January 6 call that Walgreens' shrink rate was around 3.25 percent. He reportedly claimed that the rate was just over two percent 10 years ago.

According to Kehoe, as per Insider, organized crime played a huge part in this over the last two years, which he claimed prompted a 40 to 50 percent increase in shrink.

Walgreens even closed five San Francisco stores in 2021, citing shoplifting as the cause—despite officials voicing doubt over these claims.

"Shoplifting is a huge issue especially in the beauty department. We constantly have stolen make up, hair care and skin care. There really is no way of avoiding it besides offering great customer service," Fiorella told Newsweek.

Her best efforts to help combat Walgreens ongoing shoplifting issues were met with mixed reactions from her co-workers.

"That's professional," said one, while another noted that it looked "pretty damn good."

Not everyone was sold though, as one worker asked: "Why the hell would you go to that extra length?"

In January 2021, two females were caught stealing thousands of dollars worth of perfume and cologne from a Walgreens store in Tennessee.

According to reports, the women asked the worker to open the fragrance case, claiming to be purchasing late Christmas gifts. When it came to paying however, they requested cigarettes from behind the counter, but left the store when she turned around to get them.

Update 02/21/22, 4:34 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from Claudia Fiorella.