The Ascendia Group encompasses the Rebel Sports, Glue and Amart All Sports stores, with over 180 locations nationally. Ascendia is experiencing positive growth with an additional 6 stores planned in the next financial year, including a Rebel Sports store at ANZ Stadium in Homebush.
Matt Pontin, National Operations Manager, leads a team of twelve staff responsible for all back of house operations including stocktake, audits and security. Managing physical security consumes over 50% of the team’s time.
The biggest security challenge faced by Ascendia is the growth in professional thieves, who will target the stores systematically for high value products. Foil or lead lined bags deter security tagging devices. Regardless, Ascendia has a shrinkage rate of 0.48% – a great achievement and well below industry standard.
“Ascendia encourages a strong ownership culture, and Store Managers take a high degree of responsibility for store security and shrinkage” says Matt “One of our most successful deterrent is the old-fashioned vigilance of our staff on bag checks and greeting at the door”.
CCTV throughout the stores identifies repeat offenders, installed and maintained nationally by SNP Security. Ascendia opts for high quality digital CCTV cameras and the ever reliable DVR, which offer a quality image for identification purposes to be used by Ascendia Store Management.
The success of the CCTV System with incident identification is attributed to the design of the system by SNP Security and Ascendia.
“Warehouse theft is not an issue with Ascendia” says Matt, “Many retail companies stockpile large quantities of product making it vulnerable to theft, however Ascendia’s stock is delivered direct to the stores by the supplier. This reduction in handling is a significant contributor to the low shrinkage rate.”
Stores located within major shopping complexes experience minimal ‘break and enters’. However regional based stores are often standalone, which greatly increases the occurrence with some stores being broken into on a weekly basis.
SNP Security has delivered a true integrated solution to Ascendia for five years, including CCTV and Alarms installation and maintenance, Monitoring, Patrols and Guards.
“SNP delivers a one-stop-shop for our security needs” said Matt. “Solid working relationships extend through both teams, and Ascendia are assured of fast and responsive attention.”
