Scale of retail crime leads One NZ to close Auckland store

One of the country’s largest telecommunications businesses, One NZ, formerly Vodafone, has closed its busy Auckland downtown store over staff safety concerns - and is still paying the rent.

For the first time, the company’s executive brass is speaking out about the aggression and violence its employees face in stores across the country.

“We’re sort of down to the point where we’re getting them [incidents] a couple of times a week and that might be them [customers] putting their hands on you, it might be somebody coming in with a knife and cutting through cables to steal a device,” One NZ chief consumer and business officer Chris Fletcher told Markets with Madison.

“We are seeing a massive escalation in that.”

For example, One NZ’s Sylvia Park store manager was held by the scruff of his neck by an angry customer for about 10 minutes two weeks ago, over his refusal to accept the return of a used device.

Staff received security training, counselling and had in-store panic buttons, Fletcher said, measures which were known to cost retailers millions annually.

According to the police, retail crime costs businesses $1 billion a year.

Many were now turning to technology as a first line of defence solution, offered by the Auckland-based company Auror.

Its crime-fighting software provided a platform for retailers to report crime quickly and share information with police, alerting nearby stores.

One NZ just closed a store in central Auckland over staff safety concerns. Photo / Carson Bluck

It also notified staff when known thieves entered their stores, or forecourts in the case of petrol stations.

Auror’s customers included The Warehouse Group, Briscoe Group, and Walmart and BP internationally.

Its revenue had grown by about 150 per cent year-on-year for the past three financial years, Phil Thomson told Markets with Madison.

He believed his technology could help reverse retail crime rates.

Watch today’s episode of Markets with Madison above to see how crime is impacting large retail businesses and how they’re using technology to fight back.

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Madison Reidy is the host of the NZ Herald’s investment show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment, and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.