National Loss prevention Manager position re-posted for MEC stores
in Vancouver, CA
As the National Loss prevention Manager, you'll assist our managers in providing company-wide leadership in protecting assets and minimizing financial loss by establishing vision, direction and company policy regarding loss prevention. You will develop and implement programs, policies, systems and practices throughout all business operations.

MEC has more than 3.8 million members across Canada, whom it serves through 17 stores in 6 provinces as well as mec.ca and the Shop MEC iPhone® app. Anyone can join MEC by purchasing a $5 individual lifetime membership in the Co-op.  linkedin.com

'Friendly fraud': Online retailers are grappling with new forms of digital deception
Retailers have long dealt with theft-related fraud at their stores, but newer forms of digital deception have proliferated in recent years amid higher online sales and improved security techniques at bricks-and-mortar stores. Fraud losses as a portion of retailers' online revenue has risen to 1.47 per cent in 2016 from 1.32 per cent last year and 0.68 per cent in 2014, according to a report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Given the spike in online fraud, retailers are incurring higher and higher levels of chargebacks.

Last year, $290 billion of sales were returned in the United States and Canada, according to statistics from The Retail Equation. An estimated 10 per cent of returns are thought to be either fraudulent or a misrepresentation of the facts - a fake receipt or someone returning something bought a year ago instead of yesterday, says Stephen O'Keefe, a loss prevention specialist with the Retail Council of Canada.

The buy online and pick up in store model, an option growing in popularity and offered by retailers such as Canadian Tire, Best Buy and Loblaw, is particularly vulnerable, according to LexisNexis. Its 2016 report reveals that 24 per cent of retailers' in-store "shrink" costs came from buy online and pick up in store transactions.

"It's like a whack-a-mole game," said Michael LeBlanc, senior vice-president of Marketing and Digital Retail at the Retail Council of Canada. "If you make it hard to commit fraud in stores, then (thieves) will look for some other way to commit fraud and it pops up somewhere else. This non-stop game against fraudsters just changes its characteristics a bit."  financialpost.com thestar.com

Target Hit With Investor Suit Over Retreat From Canada
Target Corp. concealed growing problems with its expansion into Canada leading up to its decision to fire its top Canadian executive and send its unit in the Great White North into bankruptcy in early 2015, investors said in a proposed securities class action Tuesday.

The Police Retirement System of St. Louis said the company defrauded its investors with a series of false and misleading statements reassuring them that things were running smoothly even as its Canadian unit struggled to get off the ground, according to its suit in Minnesota federal court Tuesday.

The company told investors, for example, that it had a strong supply chain infrastructure and distribution centers system in place, but that turned out to have been a lie, and Target had extra inventory at its distribution centers and not enough at retail locations, the police retirement system said.  law360.com

American retailers are invading high-end Canadian malls
Canada Warning to U.S. Luxury Retailers
With the arrival of luxury department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom and other high-end U.S. chains, Canadian malls may be starting to look a bit more American. However, competition in the Canadian retail space is fierce, and these retailers may soon find out that arriving in Canada is one thing, but staying for the long haul is another. 

Like Target learned the hard way, there are several complexities unique to the Canadian market that make it far different from opening a store in a new state. Missing the mark on one or a few of these could create a stumbling block that may be hard to recover from.   

"On the outside, Canada looks like the U.S. from a consumer market, but it's not. It has a number of different elements to it, regulatory, consumer behaviour-wise, structurally, that are just different." yahoo.com

Canadian retail sales fall more than expected - down 1% overall
Purchases at furniture stores tumbled 3.7 per cent, while lower prices pulled sales at gasoline stations down 1.1 per cent to their lowest since August 2010. Overall, sales were down in 6 out of 11 sectors, making up 74 per cent of retail trade. theglobeandmail.com
 
Retail Council of Canada's Ontario Safety Group
$2.4 Million. That is what 13 retailers received through RCC's Safety Group and Ontario's WSIB rebate program in 2015! They just completed their second meeting of 2016 on Friday April 22nd. The highlight was Sears Canada's presentation on how they successfully developed a culture of health and safety. Find out how your organization can benefit from programs like this! Join RCC at their next Safety Group Meeting, June 24th. Contact Patrick Rodgerson at prodgerson@retailcouncil.org.

Students train IBM's Watson computer to fight cyber crime
IBM wants its Watson computer system to learn how to fight cyber crime and it's asking eight leading universities, including three in Canada, for help. IBM is launching Watson for Cyber Security - a cloud-based version of their cognitive technology - that will be trained over the next year to examine threats of cyber crime. canadiansecuritymag.com

Canada's Hudson Bay to open 20 stores in the Netherlands

Yorkville Village is Getting a Facelift

Nordstrom hiring 1,600 for next two Canadian store openings this fall, both in Toronto

Calgary-based, FGL Sports-owned Sport Chek continuing to open flagship stores

Esprit Re-Enters Canada, Plans National Expansion

Saks OFF 5TH Announces Toronto and Edmonton Stores

Walmart Canada Q1 comp's up 6.7% - 8 consecutive quarters of comp growth

Walmart Grocery Store Chain, Neighborhood Market, Could Soon Come To Canada: Analyst

Jewellery chain Ben Moss gets creditor protection - closing 11 of it's 66 stores

Toronto's 75 pot outlets ordered to shutter in 3 days