Shop theft is a major problem for many retail stores and it seems that stealing and then selling power tools is a lucrative venture for some criminals. To fight this, Home Depot is starting to sell power tools that will not work unless activated at the checkout.
According to a 2020 study in the United States, “organized crime crime” costs retailers $ 719,548 for $ 1 billion in revenue. Shortly afterwards, a thief was arrested theft of power tools worth more than $ 17,000 from Home Depot. While many stores place high-value products in locked windows, Home Depot believes this tactic will have a negative impact on sales, so they partnered with suppliers to add an internal kill switch. While regular criminals may find a way to disable this feature, it sounds like Home Depot hopes this will be enough trouble to convince most criminals to look for easier targets elsewhere.
We’d really be interested in picking up one of these power tools to see what this kill switch looks like and how it works. Something like a Bluetooth relay is one of the options or maybe even something that is integrated directly into the motor controller. If it were up to us, we would probably choose something like that receives power wirelessly uses a coil and requires a unique code. Because of them, we hope that this is not something that can be deactivated only with a large magnet.
thank you for the tip [Garth Bock]!!