LPRC - Episode 29 – The History of the LPRC ft. King Rogers (Master Technology Group)

Episode Date: August 15, 2019

In this episode, special guest King Rogers (Master Technology Group) discusses the history of the LPRC, his experience in building AP/LP programs, his future in the industry, and much more, with co-hosts Dr. Read Hayes (LPRC) and Tom Meehan (CONTROLTEK).  The post Episode 29 – The History of the LPRC ft. King Rogers (Master Technology Group) appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of the science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Co-host Dr. Reid Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of ControlTech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. In this week's episode, special guest King Rogers of Master Technology Group discusses the history of the LPRC, his experience in building APLP programs, his future in the industry, and much more. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. Bosch integrated security and communication solutions spans zones 1 through 4 in the LPRC's zones of influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability.

Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. I'm joined today, as always always by my co-host and partner in crime here, if you will, Tom Meehan, a long-time LP and AP practitioner with Control Tech. And we're really excited today to be joined by King Rogers. And King is not only a long-time supporter of what the LPRC is trying to do collectively from an industry standpoint and a research standpoint, but really at the end of the day, it was his idea.

So what we thought we'd do is Tom and I spent a little bit of quality time with King Rogers, also a longtime AP practitioner known far and wide as the former vice president of AP, really lost prevention at one point, even though his team was assets protection. But we'll go into all that in a minute. Tom, welcome aboard. And King, welcome today and joining us on Crime Science. All right. So what I thought I'd do here is, I guess, start out with a question to see, what are you working on right now, King? What are you up to? Right now, I have just started an attempt at my third retirement.

In March of 2016, Master Technology Group acquired the King Rogers Group, which was my company at the time. Technology Group acquired the King Rogers Group, which was my company at the time. And three plus years later, the buyout has been concluded. And as a result of that, I am trying to retire yet once again. But they say that three times a charm. So we'll see if this is going to work. I don't know what the odds, what the over-under is in Vegas on whether it's going to work or not, but we'll find out. Excellent. Well, that sounds good. And I can imagine retirement is a job

and trying to get there. But again, I'm also very glad to hear that you're not going to be completely gone from the LPAP landscape. We need your energy. We need your ideas and what we're trying to do. Tom, do you want to start off with any particular questions or comments right now for King? Thanks for joining us. I'm sure the listening audience is excited to hear what you have to say. I'm sure the listening audience is excited to hear what you have to say. I know I have a whole bunch of questions for you, but I mean, I think my thing is, King, you were always very progressive. I mean, I remember when I was at Home Depot, I remember always hearing about the LPRC even before I was involved, and you were ultra progressive. What was the drive for that? I mean, you were ahead of the curve, really, compared to almost everybody.

Well, Tom, I love this industry, and I have a lot of respect for this industry. One of the things that Reed was gracious enough not to say in his introduction was, I am one of the oldest surviving LP practitioners around today. So I'm not sure that that's a notable mantle, but nevertheless, I wear it proudly. What really drove me was continuous process improvement. I am a firm believer and always have been, and everything you do, there's a way to do it better. And part of the effort and doing what you do is to find a way to do it better. And that's what I think has driven me. Sometimes the simplest answer makes the most sense.

When we talk about the LPRC, why don't you, I mean, you were involved in the beginning, and I'm always, I hear this story from a whole bunch of other people. I've never had the opportunity to ask you, what was it like when you first got with Reed and started the conversation? Well, we have to go back to 1990, and probably even further back than that. Now, you got to keep in mind, in my opinion, even in 1990, Reed was just a kid and a very smart kid who had done a significantly wonderful job in trying to peel apart the loss prevention industry and understand it and in doing so communicate what it's all about. In fact, in 1990, he wrote a book on retail security and loss prevention.

And I read the book and really enjoyed reading it and had the opportunity to meet with Reid again forgive me for saying this Reid but you really were kind of a kid back then you were working for Ross of course your mentor was a gentleman named Dave Whitney whom I knew as well and Dave was he was a big man about 6 1 or so and if I were to describe Dave he was an older gentleman with kind of a pink complexion and gray hair and glasses and his legacy was that as a kid he had become a professional crew hand on a fishing boat that went out of the Pacific Northwest and then he served time in law enforcement as a police officer. Then he worked for Woolworths before he went to Ross. But at Ross, you were fortunate and he was fortunate that he hired you to work in Ross Loss Prevention.

You were doing some things that were out of the box and on the cutting edge back then. And not without some criticism from your peers. But Dave recognized that, as I understand it, told you to, from that point on, report directly to him and continue doing what you're doing, just do more of it. So my experience with Reed was he was new in the industry. He was so eager to learn and to share his education with everyone else that it was darn refreshing. And so that was, in my opinion, the beginning of LPRC.

It wasn't long thereafter that Reed and I had been attending a conference together. And again, I'd read his book and asked him if he would mind coming to Target's headquarters in Minneapolis. Oh, by the way, it was in the dead of winter in 1997, and he was coming up from Georgia and Florida. So he had to adjust both not only time zone but also climate zone. And he was freezing to death because he wasn't prepared for the trip. Nevertheless, he came up, and we talked about what he was doing and what he could do for Target. And I had the opportunity to ask him to create a research proposal for me to share at Target,

not only the results of the proposal but actually the process as well and so he prepared his proposal to me and I got it funded and he went on to conduct a large-scale research project on offenders and what's in their head, what they're thinking about, as well as thinking of counter-theft measures based on what the offenders were thinking. We conducted that research project, and it was a real benefit. By the way, I actually purchased 200 of those books that he had authored back in 1990 and sent them to our district, regional, and direct report team. And, Reed, I don't know if you ever got paid for them or not,

but they were a great book and a great resource for us. I did get paid, thank you. Or the publisher did, anyway. Good. So anyway, that proposal commenced in 1999, and by 2000, Reed and I were sharing a DS, the NREP Loss Prevention Conference, and the title of our presentation was Shoplifting and Science Inside the Athlete's Mind.

And really this was a compilation of the results of the research project that Reid had done, and he presented the highlights of that project. And I had the opportunity, in my role of producing Reid, to tell the audience there, which consisted of a lot of industry leaders, to join with Target and start a loss prevention assets protection research organization that Target would help stand behind, ask Reed to do the heavy lifting for it. And so that year, the LPRC was actually founded by a number of visionary retail loss prevention leaders who, some of whom, or maybe all of whom, attended that particular conference and listened to that presentation.

I'm still impressed with what Reid had developed through his research project that we launched the Loss Prevention Research Council. Wow. So I think that's the first time I ever heard you tell the story. So it's really interesting. And I remember the first time that I met you, and this is just kind of funny, is I didn't know your name was really King. I just thought everybody called you the King. and this is just kind of funny is I didn't know your name was really King. I just thought everybody called you the King. And I was obviously I'm younger and I remember hearing about you. So it was interesting coming from you.

Switching gears a little bit, why don't you tell the listeners how you ended up in APLP in early part of your career? Well, I'll try to shorten the story, Tom. But after college, I was a military intelligence officer and served part of that duty at the National Security Agency as an analyst and served in Southeast Asia. by the North Koreans during 10 Offensive of 68. I had to leave Vietnam, oh golly, and go north to South Korea to help retrieve the vessel and the crew. We were successful in getting the crew back. We were not so successful in getting the ship back. But anyway, after I completed my obligation, my family was living in the Philadelphia area, so I moved to the Philadelphia area and got a job with a retailer there called Strawbridge & Clothier

and was hired in their management training program. And the first thing I did was to count ties and socks in the men's department as part of my training process and that was followed by a stint as assistant manager of the inventory shortage control department. Now keep in mind I was a history major and I wasn't very good at counting beans but one had to know how to count beans if one was going to be in charge of inventory shortage. I learned how to do that and became the manager of that department. And my career kind of took me through a number of operations jobs. And I was running a couple of stores.

I got a call from the chairman of the executive committee of the Board of Directors, who said that they were planning, the board had decided to take store security, which is what it was called in those days, risk management, internal audit, and inventory shortage control, and put those four functions under one umbrella and call it assets protection.

And he asked me if I would be willing to serve as the director of assets protection. It was like a kid in a candy store. I was very excited to say yes, and I became director of assets protection. And suddenly I was responsible for functions that, frankly, I really didn't know very much about. Security was a good example of that. As an intelligence analyst, you understand how to collect intelligence, which is data, and convert that data into information for somebody to take some action on,

which turns out the investigations, I could do the analysis part, couldn't do the investigations part. So I had to learn quickly and I had to solicit the help of some of my team at Strawbridge's at Stalberges to teach me how to do surveillances and interviews before the Wicklanders allowed for days and become effective at protecting the store, if you will, and the supply chain. That's how I got into it. That's how I got into it. And then in the early 80s, I was recruited by Target stores to become VP of loss prevention for Target stores. Even though I'd been in many different parts of the world. Prior to that, when the headhunter called me about the target position,

I had to go to my atlas and learn where Minneapolis was. I really didn't have any idea. I used to fly over that part of the world. Anyway, I went to Minneapolis and had a great team, which needed some work. We got that work done, and it was very productive. When I got there, we had a shrink of about 2.7%, and by the time I left some years later, we had it down to 0.7%. So the results really paid off.

When you were at Target, I mean, how long were you there actually, King? That was my first question. About 18 years. And I had been with Starbridge & Cl clothier for 14 and a half years prior to that and uh obviously in the military for five and a half years and uh for my productive years if you will and and over the years i mean throughout really any retailer, you know, specific, they need to be specific to Target. How did you keep selling your programs and objectives and processes to the C-suite? You were very progressive, so I'm sure that you were asking for things other people weren't. What were some of the key things you did to sell it to the leadership? Well, as crass as this may sound, Tom, I really didn't care what other people were doing.

I only cared about what Target needed to do and what Target Corporation needed to do. And I always subscribed to the notion of undersell and overdeliver. And in the process of doing that, I tried to use shrink numbers as metrics in touting a return on investment of projects that I wanted to get done. in touting a return on investment of projects that I wanted to get done. Shrink can be a very muddy pool of money. I wanted things that were more specific and more exact that I could assign metrics to pay for the projects that way. And when I say undersell and overdeliver, I always said, here are the results I intend to achieve. And

the projects that were funded resulted in actually putting more money on the bottom line than I promised we would do. Who were some of your subordinate AP leaders over the years that you mentored that got into other leadership roles at other chains? And I know you worked, it feels like everybody that I know had worked for you at some time. But so of course, some of the standouts or accomplishments that you can think of that you'd like to share with the group? accomplishments that you can think of that you'd like to share with the group? Well, I can think of three of the most notable, starting with Marvin Ellison, who is the CEO of Lowe's. Marvin, a quick story on Marvin, he had recently graduated from Memphis State University

with a degree in marketing, and he was in one of our districts in the Tennessee market and met him and what a polished young man felt like Parker must have felt when he discovered Elvis Presley I knew that Marvin had a lot of talent and on the, on the trip back to Minneapolis after meeting with Marvin, I began to conjure up ways to capitalize on his talent and figure out ways to be behind the curtain and help pull some of the strings to enable his career. And fortunately, he always surpassed my expectations which were always very high and so Marvin became his career in the field took off and he wanted a regional job and I said you got to come into Minneapolis and spend a year there in operations, in assets protection operations, before you go back out as a regional.

And I had to talk him into doing that. But he finally acquiesced and agreed to serve in that capacity. And he just did an outstanding job, and I was delighted to get him back out on the field in the leadership role there. Another of my mentees who has really pleased me with his progress is Keith White, Executive Vice President of the Gap. He's just done a remarkable job, and Keith worked for me both in Target as well as

at Dayton Hudson Corporation, and he was also in, had responsibility for the supply chain, and he's just done a remarkable job. I read something this morning where the Gap is being held up, is being honored as a retailer with tremendous green practices in their merchandising and running their stores, and that is one of Pete's roles at the GAP. And then Ray Cloud, who is Senior Vice President of Loss Prevention at Ross, kind of goes full

circle, doesn't it, Reed? Ray is another one of my mentees who has done a tremendous job, and he is at Ross, which was where Reed started years ago. Those are three, and there are lots of others. We don't have enough time to go through all of them, but I'm very proud of all of them, and it's a real honor to have my name associated with them. Fantastic. Thanks, King, so much for that. One thing I thought we'd touch on is from your perspective, and you're not as old as you think you are, because then that would mean that I am, but I was going to ask you about what are some things that you see evolving out there, and how can we make AP and LP better in your perspective?

Well, I think our employers are looking for ways to increase efficiencies in running their retail enterprises, and in doing so, have in some cases gone down the path of diversification in as much as they will take operations people and put them into loss prevention and they will take loss prevention people and put them into operations and what bothers me is not the diversity of doing those initiatives, but it's the lack of training. Loss prevention, assets protection is a specialized area. It needs to be treated and respected as a specialized area. area. All of us who have been in loss prevention for any period of time know that you have to know almost as much as a criminal attorney, certainly as a civil attorney. You have to know as much as a law enforcement officer or police

officer. You have to train to defend yourself and to mitigate situations that could get out of control if you don't. But you also have to understand the business of your employer, which is retailing and the supply chain that the goods follow to get into the customer's hands. Reed, you made a comment to me some time ago when you were talking about Dave Whitney being your mentor. He taught you to get down in the weeds and tell the business, but it was because you had to know how to protect the business that he challenged you to do that. And that's exactly what loss prevention practitioners have to do. We all know that if a loss prevention practitioner who's confronted with decisions all day long,

every day, if one of those decisions is wrong, it could be a huge price. You need to avoid those liability high-risk situations as much as possible. So there needs to be a training effort in order to capitalize on the efficiencies that the retailer retail enterprises achieve by having operations people learn how to be loss prevention people and we not everybody is good being prevention that being a practitioner and loss prevention so you need to recognize that early in the game and make adjustments accordingly. That's great stuff is understanding how is this enterprise, this thing, this entity that we're trying to protect, how is it operating?

What are all the components? Where are they buried. And I do remember going back real quickly at Ross stores where we were having some, clearly having some inventory leakage somewhere. And we literally got in a room and tried to make calls and go make visits and understand every single step and stage, any place that our merchandise moved from the manufacturer or wherever we were buying it off the wire, for example, how were those items moving throughout the enterprise to look for things that we didn't realize were happening, to look for gaps and opportunities to improve that entire handling process. And in the course

of that, we discovered this truck trailer drop-off point that the truck drivers came up with from all these different entities where they would leave these trailers overnight or over weeks sometimes that nobody at Ross stores knew about at that time. And guess what? We were losing trailer loads or partial trailer loads, or some guys were selling stuff out of the back of trailers and so forth. So that was an example on that end. And going real quickly to Dave Whitney, and that was during his leadership time when we conducted that exercise. But he would go, and every time he would visit, he would go into the cash office of every store, sit down with whoever was in charge and with the manager there and me or whoever he was with, and go through how to count

money, how many ones, how many fives, and so on, how to do basic things with them because he understood everything about that enterprise. And another person, by the way, I'll never forget, was Bill Cohn at AutoZone, getting to spend a lot of good quality time with him. And he knew that business like nobody else. Let me go over to you, if I might, Tom. And I know you had a couple of good questions. I think you partially answered this, but with all the changes in retail that have happened really in the last five to 10 years and the evolution, what are some of the challenges that you see that retailers are facing that are different or maybe the same? And what advice do you have for some folks that are newer into the leadership roles? Well, I'll go back to my earlier statement about continuous process improvement and thinking

about better ways. process improvement and thinking about better ways. I'm delighted that now I see more and more utilization of data in driving the direction that protection and retailers is going. I'm delighted because that was my early background in the intelligence business, and I understood that experience, the value of utilizing intelligence. And today, there are different sources and resources to mine and harvest data from the retail enterprise. to mine and harvest data from the retail enterprise. And it's just data until it's been analyzed.

And once it goes through the analysis process, then it converts to intelligence. And once it gets there, then there are a lot of technology tools that can be used to capture and harness that intelligence. For example, I look at the way video surveillance has evolved over the years and the future for video surveillance with analytics and predictive analysis. And it's incredibly successful in the direction that it's going, and it's driven by the use of intelligence. And I see a lot of what we're doing,

and we'll be doing in the future, driven by intelligence, integrated with the right technology. future driven by intelligence integrated with the right technology that was one of the great opportunities I had over the last three years being an indentured servant I say that with my tongue-in-cheek for master technology group and actually there's a lot of similarity I guess between what you control tech and what I was doing for master technology group but it's the opportunity to to creatively find the technologies that can be integrated to deliver as solutions to challenges that retailers are facing today.

And I think we're getting much better at that. We're doing it with less risk. And I think it keeps the bad guys off guard, which is essential for our success. which is essential for our success. So, Keith, you know, I always am asked this question, and I don't often get to ask anybody else this question. What was it like transitioning out of the practitioner side for you into more of the solution provider side? You know, I always think of myself as I'm doing the exact same thing I was doing before.

I just am working for a different company. But I'm curious to what your opinion was with all of your experience when you switched over. What was that like for you? I guess I was a closet entrepreneur at the time. When I was in the corporate world working for Target Corporation, we all know that in many large corporations like Target and others there is a lot of politics that occur and I always thought that that there were a lot of politics of the military and I was looking to

afford to getting away from playing those politics and I got into retailing and as I moved into the larger corporation, there were more and more politics. Now that said, I must have played those politics very well because I was successful with them. I didn't always enjoy them. And as an entrepreneur, I could kind of take off on my own independently and not be involved that much in politics. After I flunkedirement 101 the first time, my consulting partner, Ben Guffey, who was my counterpart at Kmart, and I did a project for a company.

It was a paid project for this particular company, and it was looking for a business plan for them to pursue in the retail supply chain. And so we created that business model for them, and the subsequent plan, the owner of that company went out and got it funded, and next thing I knew, Ben and I had been requested to join the company as employees, and we suddenly got back into the corporate world. And unfortunately, Ben passed away rather suddenly, and I decided to go back into my independence as a retail consultant, and so I tried retirement number two at that point. And it was, I think, pretty successful.

I had a great time doing it. I guess the bottom line to the answer to your question is there has to be that entrepreneurial spirit. You have it. You have it. I have it. Reid has it. And sometimes it's a blessing. Sometimes it's the opposite. But it's not being able to say no.

The glass is always half full. And that's the way we go through life with a very positive outlook on abilities and capability. That's excellent. I was going to ask you, King, if I could. You've talked about an organization and a little bit about the individual, but now again taking a step back and looking, what could the individual,

particularly the newer AP or LP practitioner, what can he or she do to maybe make themselves better? We've talked about learn the business, get down the weeds, and then try and think a little bit more about the big picture. What are we overall trying to do? But what about in between? What are any recommendations for the newer practitioner or somebody that would like to move on up through the organization? but what about in between? What are any recommendations for the newer practitioner or somebody that would like to move on up through the organization? Well, as I think about the answer to that question, Reed, I think back in my early days where technology was the equivalent of a slide rule

or an abacus, whereas today it's certainly gone way well beyond that. And as I said before, I believe that data is going to drive the direction of loss prevention in the future. So with all the other stuff that one has to learn to be successful in loss prevention, you have to have a basis in technology and a basis in data. You have to be able to at least walk the talk in understanding technology and digging in to the extent that you can to teach yourself. But I look at a guy like Tom, and Tom, I'm not saying this just to stroke you, but, I mean, you are a data guru who has been very effective in your loss prevention initiatives, both with Bloomingdale's and now with ControlTech,

and with your leadership on the LPRC. Fortunately or unfortunately, you really epitomize the role model for the future. Now, that's a heavy burden, my friend. I appreciate that, and I'm not sure I always agree with that, but I do appreciate it. I appreciate it. I'm not sure I always agree with that, but I do appreciate it. I appreciate everything you've done for the industry, and I always enjoy listening to you. Well, and I'd like to build on that a little bit, King, in that Tom is an example. Supply chain is a critical part of our enterprise. It is integral. It is our enterprise in a lot of ways.

It gets the merchandise when things are going right, right where it should be, when it should be, and then returns it where it needs to go as well. So I know Tom has been a student of supply chain and the integrity and the operation and improvement thereof. On the cyber side, well, almost everything's digital, as everybody knows. On this podcast, we're moving information about our team, about our merchandise, about our money, where we're trying to go, everything. And so I know, Tom, you've gone out of your way to become a student of all things digital. How do we better use it? How do we better protect it? And then, like you're talking about, King, I believe

just trying to get out there and understand investigations at the very complex, sophisticated ORC, Organized Retail Crime level, sophisticated dishonest associate or employee level, at all strata of the organization, and then just understanding how to protect a very complex store, like particularly the main Bloomingdale's that takes up an entire city block. Ask Fred Becker there what that's like and so on. So I think it's pretty neat. It's pretty rich. Look, see, King, what you're pointing out, and that we have some exemplars of that where you really need to know what you're doing,

what you're up against, and try and master that. That's what we're here for. Let's get better every day in what we do and what we know and how to get better. Well, what I'd like to do is thank you both again, Tom, for co-hosting, and King, of course, for spending some of your valuable time as you continue to put together your third retirement exit plan. What makes you passionate, or what are you passionate about now, King, as you construct your next exit? Well, Reed, as you know, my wife and I live in a house, a very nice home up on a lake in northern Minnesota. The house is way too big,

but it is really nice, and the lake is absolutely incredible. And just having spent a little bit more time in the last several weeks here at the house than I have in the past. It strikes me as though I really have to work hard on being able to spend more time here and work on enjoying it. But I get, I'm constantly tugged back into the industry. It's like this podcast. It's a pleasure and an honor to be able to do this. I certainly don't mind it distracting me from my retirement task at hand. In fact, I admittedly welcome it. My wife has requested I try not to alphabetize the spice rack anymore.

I hear you. Well, enjoy your third run at retirement, and we're also excited and pleased to hear that you're still going to be available, putting some of your insights and letting us benefit from your experience, your expertise, all the lessons learned the easy way and the hard way, I'm sure. So thank you, everybody, for another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. Thank you for inviting me, Reed. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council

and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the LPS Prevention Research Council.