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EAS has been around for more than 30 years now and there are more than 800,000 EAS systems installed in stores around the world. While there are several different EAS technologies in existence, the bulk of all active systems today are one of just two dominant types. All EAS systems consist of tags or labels that are attached to or hidden in merchandise, and a set of detectors, usually installed at a store's exits, which are designed to detect tags and/or labels when they have not been removed or deactivated at the point of sale. |
Worldwide, retail shrinkage amounts to more than $70 Billion USD, of
which about 40%, or roughly $28 Billion USD, is attributed to
shoplifting. Retailers employ a wide variety of technologies and other
measures to combat these staggering losses, one of the most popular of
which is Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS.
 Historically,
the tags and labels were applied by hand to merchandise right in the
store – a costly addition to a store's labor expense. During busy
seasons, goods often went on the sales floor without EAS protection,
making them vulnerable to theft.
While in-store tagging is still performed today, a large and growing number of products are now “Source Tagged” by the product manufacturers. By sewing a tag into fashion items or applying an adhesive label inside of a product package or even in the actual product, manufacturers can provide a level of protection and compliance difficult to achieve at the store level, using much more economical means.
Demand for the adoption of Source Tagging was originally driven by some
of the largest retail organizations in the world. Today, as a result of
widespread acceptance, source tagging benefits retailers of all sizes
across many market segments. Source Tagging TechnologiesThere are primarily two EAS technologies that dominate the world market for retail theft prevention. Although originally available from just a few companies, both Swept Radio Frequency (commonly referred to as RF) and Acousto- Magnetic (commonly referred to as AM) are now manufactured by several companies located in North America, Europe and Asia, and distributed globally. Although roughly equal in popularity, AM and RF are incompatible technologies. The tags from one will not activate the system of the other therefore, in order for source tagging to be effective, the tag installed at the source must match the technology in use at the destination store. At KMA, we make each of our source tagging solutions available in both of these popular EAS technology formats, and in the case of our DualTag ™ , we combine the key elements of both, into a single label. |
