Black Friday and the holiday shopping season that follows put more inventory, more customers, and more cash through a business in a shorter window than almost any other stretch of the year. That concentration, more of everything happening faster and under more pressure, is exactly why loss prevention needs to be sorted out well before the rush arrives, not scrambled together once it’s already underway.
The scale of the issue
Retail shrinkage in Canada has been climbing steadily, and the trend isn’t slowing down. The Retail Council of Canada reports that total losses from theft and shrinkage reached $9.1 billion in 2024, nearly double the $5 billion recorded in 2018, with shrink now representing about 1.5% of total retail sales nationally, a figure now roughly in line with shrink levels reported in the United States. Separately, industry data shows shoplifting incidents in Canada rose 66% between 2014 and 2024, a decade-long trend that has continued even as some other property crime categories have actually declined over the same period.
The holiday season specifically compounds these numbers in predictable ways. Higher shopper volume, more distracted customers juggling bags, coats, kids, and phones all at once, and higher-value merchandise sitting on shelves all create more opportunity in a shorter window than the rest of the year combined. Retailers consistently report that busy, crowded conditions make theft harder to spot in the moment, which is part of why prevention planning ahead of time matters more than relying on in-the-moment vigilance from already-stretched staff.
It’s not just in-store risk anymore
Package theft has become a growing part of the holiday loss picture too, and it affects both retailers and their customers in ways that don’t always show up in a traditional shrink report. The same decade-long rise in shoplifting has coincided with a related trend: more parcels sitting on doorsteps for longer periods as home delivery volume increases sharply through the holidays. Retailers increasingly get contacted about this issue by frustrated customers even though the theft itself happens well after the sale is complete and outside the retailer’s direct control, which makes it a reputational issue as much as a financial one.
Getting ahead of the season
A handful of concrete steps, tackled in October rather than late November, make a real difference once volume peaks:
- Audit camera coverage in high-value departments and near exits before volume increases, not after an incident has already occurred and everyone’s asking why it wasn’t caught.
- Review seasonal staff access and training so temporary hires understand loss prevention basics, not just how to run the register. A five-minute conversation at onboarding pays for itself many times over.
- Check high-shrink SKU placement, moving frequently stolen items closer to staffed areas or checkout rather than leaving them in isolated aisles where a five-second window goes unnoticed.
- Confirm after-hours monitoring accounts for extended holiday hours, which often change week to week through November and December as stores extend into evenings and weekends.
- Plan for peak staffing gaps. The busiest shopping days are often also the days with the thinnest staffing relative to customer volume; know in advance which shifts need extra coverage or extra attention.
- Walk the floor with fresh eyes before the first big weekend, looking specifically for new seasonal displays or end caps that might be creating blind spots that didn’t exist in October.
Prevention that doesn’t rely on catching someone after the fact
The retailers weathering this trend best aren’t necessarily the ones with the most cameras installed, they’re the ones whose systems catch a problem while it’s actually happening. AI-powered monitoring, reviewed by a real person, means unusual activity gets flagged and addressed in real time, during the moment it’s occurring, not discovered weeks later buried in a shrink report once the damage is already done and the numbers are impossible to fully explain.
Verified. Not just monitored. Going into the busiest stretch of the retail calendar, that distinction is worth more than almost anything else a business can invest in this season.
A pre-holiday walkthrough with your Security ONE consultant, scheduled now while there’s still time to make changes, is one of the highest-leverage things a retailer can do before Black Friday hits.
The holiday rush is coming. Is your loss prevention ready? Book a free pre-holiday consultation with Security ONE. We’ll review your camera coverage, staffing gaps, and monitoring schedule before Black Friday, not after. Reserve your spot at securityonealarm.com.
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