Friday, December 12, 2008

Blister Packs and You

Like you, I hate blister packs. HATE 'em. Most consumers believe that blister packs exist solely to annoy you. They don't. Blister packs exist to minimize/mitigate the risk of inventory shrinkage, due to shoplifting or employee theft. And to annoy you.

The University of Florida's excellent annual National Retail Security Survey shows the sobering numbers, so you can understand why product manufacturers are so concerned about creating barriers to shrinkage (and I'm not talking staying out of cold water, Costanza). But, at some point, that barrier leaps from being protective to being overbearing and silly.

Particularly overbearing and silly is receiving an imposingly-packaged product from an online retailer--who should have little to worry about in terms of customers pilfering items from a warehouse, although obviously employee theft is still an issue. Every time I receive a product from Amazon, I'm curious whether I'm going to open the box to find a piece of gear logically packaged for storage and shipment from an online retailer, or whether I'm going to find something that belongs on a retail show floor.

Unfortunately for a young man named Dennis Millarker, he received the latter.

1 comment:

  1. At first I was going to ask you why the hell you were posting about blister packs but then, after reading the amazon story, it was worth it. - SAI

    ReplyDelete