Your store loses 1.6% of sales to shrink. The monthly inventory count doesn’t tell you where.

US retail ran at 1.6% shrink in FY 2022 — $112.1 billion in losses [NRF National Retail Security Survey 2023, https://nrf.com/research/national-retail-security-survey-2023, accessed 2026-08-31]. Mexico sits at 1.08% of sales per the ANTAD + Deloitte Census of Mermas, 2020-2021 reference year [ANTAD, https://antad.net/retail-talks-censo-nacional-de-mermas-mercado-detallista-antad-retailers-mx, accessed 2026-08-31]. Brazil averaged 1.57% in 2023 [KPMG + Abrappe, https://kpmg.com/br/pt/insights/2024/11/pesquisa-abrappe-2024.html, accessed 2026-08-31]. Colombia’s supermarkets lost roughly $144B COP to theft in 2023, against $740B COP in total operational shrink [El Tiempo citing FENALCO, https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/sectores/lo-que-pierden-los-comercios-de-colombia-por-los-robos-hormiga-segun-el-censo-nacional-de-mermas-3393569, accessed 2026-08-31].

( when net margin runs at 2-5%, a 1.6% shrink rate eats 32-80% of profit )

End-of-month inventory tells you how much you lost. It never tells you which SKU walked out, when in the day, or who took it. ANTAD data shows 35-40% of Mexican retailers attribute that “unknown shrink” to vendor fraud and administrative errors — not shoplifting [ANTAD, https://antad.net/retail-talks-censo-nacional-de-mermas-mercado-detallista-antad-retailers-mx, accessed 2026-08-31].

What the Loss Prevention Manager actually asks for, in every retail deployment I review for tv4agent, is not more cameras. It’s point-of-incident visibility: which SKU went out, which door, which time of day, and under what circumstances. The metric that moves the needle isn’t camera resolution or FPS. It’s the minutes between an event happening and someone actually identifying it.

What cameras do well on their own: record the event, timestamp it, and give investigators a starting point when a SKU comes up short. What they can’t do alone: surface systematic shrink patterns across hours of footage without someone reviewing it.

P.D. How many minutes does your team spend locating a specific incident in your footage when end-of-month counts don’t reconcile? If the answer is “more than 10”, today is a good day to revisit the stack.

📰 Sources: ANTAD Census of Mermas 2021; NRF National Retail Security Survey 2023; FENALCO Colombia 2023 via El Tiempo; KPMG + Abrappe Pesquisa de Perdas 2024.

Sources

[1] ANTAD — Retail Talks: Censo Nacional de Mermas Mercado Detallista ANTAD (Expo ANTAD 2023) — https://antad.net/retail-talks-censo-nacional-de-mermas-mercado-detallista-antad-retailers-mx [2] NRF — National Retail Security Survey 2023 — https://nrf.com/research/national-retail-security-survey-2023 [3] El Tiempo — Censo Nacional de Mermas FENALCO Colombia 2023 — https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/sectores/lo-que-pierden-los-comercios-de-colombia-por-los-robos-hormiga-segun-el-censo-nacional-de-mermas-3393569 [4] KPMG + Abrappe — Pesquisa de Perdas no Varejo Brasileiro 2024 — https://kpmg.com/br/pt/insights/2024/11/pesquisa-abrappe-2024.html