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

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

As we get closer to 2026 LPRC IMPACT & the opening of the LP Museum at the LPRC, we are happy to share this past episode! 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). 

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. Reed Hayes of the Lost Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of Control Tech 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 and enhance safety,

reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communication Solutions spans zones one through four 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 Department. I'm joined today, as always, by my co-host and partner in crime here, if you will, Tom Meen, 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 longtime 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 do is Tom and I spent a little bit of quality time with King Rogers. Also a long time 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.

All right. So what I thought I do here is, I guess, start out with a question to see, what do you working on right now, King? What are you up to? Right now, I have just started my attempt at my third retirement. In March of 2016, Master of 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 it 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, 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 in trying to get there. But again, I'm also very glad to hear that you're not going to be completely gone from the LPA 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? starters, thanks for joining us. I'm sure the listening audience is excited to hear what you have to say.

I know we 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 metal, 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're 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 we wrote a book and retail security and loss prevention. And I read the book and really enjoyed reading it and had the opportunity to meet with Reed. Again, forgive me for saying this, Reed, 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 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 coo 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 they recognize 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 darned 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 and 18. 97 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-thept measures based on what the offenders were thinking. He 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 I read, I don't know if you ever got paid for them or not, but they were a great book and great resource for us.

I did get paid. Thank you. Or are the publisher dead anyway? Good. So, anyway, that proposal commenced in 1999. And by 2000, Reed and I were sharing a DICE at the NRF Laws Prevention Conference, and the title of our presentation was shoplifting in science inside the affairs mind. And really, this was a compilation of the results of the research project that Reed had done.

and he presented the highlights of that project. And I had the opportunity as in my role of reducing Reed, to tell the audience there, it's consisted of a lot of industry leaders who join with Target and start a loss prevention, Assets Protection Research Organization, that Target would help stand behind, to ask Reed to do the heavy lifting for it. And so that year, the OPRC 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 so impressed with what Reed had develop 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 I was obviously I'm younger and I remember hearing about here. So it was interesting coming from me. you. I'm switching gears a little bit. Why don't you tell the listeners how you, you know,

ended up in APLP and 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 and the Pueblo was seized 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. Not so successful in getting the ship back back.

But anyway, after I competed in 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 and Clavier and was hired in their management training program. And 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 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 bowl. 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. board had decided to take store security which is what it was called in those days risk management internal audit 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 Strawbages to teach me how to do surveillance and interviews before the Licklanders allowed few days. become effective at protecting the store, if you will, on the supply chain.

That's how I got into it. And then in the early 80s, I was recruited by Target stores to become DP of loss prevention for Target stores. and even though I'd been in many different parts of the world prior to that, when the headhunter called me at 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. But anyway, 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 percent, 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 Starvation Clothier for 14 and a half years prior to that, and obviously in the military for five and a half years, and through my productive years, if you will.

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 subscribe to the notion of undersell and over-deliver.

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. on shrink is a it can be a very muddy pool of money and 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 under sell and over deliver always said here are the results I intend to achieve and 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 are 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. I met him, and what a polished young man. I felt like Colonel Parker must have felt when he discovered Elvis Presley. I knew that Marvin had a lot of talent. And on the trip back to Minneapolis after meeting with Marvin, I began to conjure up ways to capitalize on his talent.

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've 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 and the leadership.

role there. Another of my mentees that, who has really pleased me with his progress, is Keith White, executive vice president at 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, it had responsibility for 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. That is one of Pete's roles at the gap. And then Ray Poud, who is senior vice president in Los 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 you know one thing I thought we'd touch on is you know 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 are 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. Need to be treated and respected as a specialized 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 retail enterprises can achieve by having operations people, learn how to be lost prevention people. And 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 the, 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 raw stores where we were 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 week 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, 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 ten years and the evolution, where are some of the challenges that you see that retailers are facing that are different or maybe the same?

And what advice 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. 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 new intelligence. And today, there are different sources and resources 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 goes 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 in. And it's driven by the use of intelligence. And I see a lot of what we're doing, we'll be doing in the 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,

and 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 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, potential for our success. So, Keith, you know, I always am asked this question, and I don't often get to ask anybody

else's question. What was it like transitioning out of the practitioner side for you into more of the solution provider's side? You know, I always think of myself as I'm doing the exact same thing I was doing before. I just, you know, I'm 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 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's a lot of politics that occur. And I always thought that there were a lot of politics in the military, and I was looking to afford to getting away from playing those politics. And I got into retailing, and as I moved in the larger corporation, there were more and more politics. 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 flaunt retirement 101, the first time, my consulting partner, Ben Guffy, who was my counterpart at King, 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 had it funded. And the 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.

was, I think, pretty successful and had a great time doing it. Just the bottom line to the answer to your question is, it has to be that entrepreneurial spirit. You have it. I have it. Reed 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 know, we've talked about an organization and a little bit about the individual, but, you know, 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? or 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? Well, as I think about the answer to that question, Reed, I think back to my early days where technology was the, the equivalent. of a slide rule or an avocas, whereas today is certainly going 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 And your loss prevention initiatives, both with Bloomingdale's and now with Control Tech 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'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, you know, Tom is an example. And, all right, I need 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. But so I know Tom has been a student of supply chain and the integrity and the operation and improvement of 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, a 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're going to 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. 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?

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 four 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'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 distract me from my retirement task at hand. In fact, I admittedly welcome it. Wife has requested, I try not to alphabetize the spice around. 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 in 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 Lost Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and value of information at LPRsearch.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 Loss Prevention Research Council.