CFOs approve bigger budgets when you stop talking about shrink

Here’s what we have in store for you this week:

• The Rundown: How retail loss can be poised as revenue protection
• Worth Your Time: Retail workers report safety concerns, On holds pricing despite tariffs, and delivery issues affect 75% of shoppers
• What We’re Up To: $685M in returns is not a rounding error

Loss prevention doesn’t exist in a vacuum. 

One apparel retailer proved this when they disconnected their return’s management system during an upgrade and saw return rates climb back to previous levels within 90 days. They reconnected the system, and rates dropped immediately.

Revenue protection works like a firewall. If you turn it off, the attacks get through.

The complete picture is that loss and returns affect top-line sales, margins, and cash flow simultaneously. The same fraudulent behavior creates losses across multiple P&L lines. The problem is, departments managing those lines separately can’t identify the patterns.

Pedro knows what CFOs care about because he spent years presenting to them—and he knows the importance of connecting loss prevention to a greater picture of the bottom-line. Here are his three principles to improve CFO conversations:

1. Speak revenue impact, not shrink percentages. CFOs allocate budgets based on which investments protect the most revenue. Pedro stopped walking in with shrink reduction numbers. Instead, he’d show how a single fraud pattern was hitting three different departments—each tracking their own losses without seeing the connection. His job became drawing the line between those dots.
2. Build direct relationships beyond budget season. By the time budget season rolled around, Pedro had already spent months having lunch with the CFO’s business analyst. No proposals, no asks, just regular and organic updates on what he was seeing across the business. When annual budget planning came around, the CFO naturally already knew his story and wanted to work on a collaborative solution. The formal request was a formality.
3. Structure for quick wins without IT overload. Pedro hunted through his own operating budget first. He found underperforming spend, cut it, then walked into the CFO’s office with a proposal that required minimal new capital and wouldn’t overwhelm IT.

Fast results, low risk, clear ROI. That’s the trifecta that moves through approval committees.

Technology consolidation creates your window. Post-2020, omnichannel retailers accumulated solutions in ecomm survival mode. Now they’re eliminating redundancy.

Your move: Find the underperforming line items, build the net-zero proposal, request that lunch. 

Pedro’s playbook shows exactly how to position retail loss as revenue protection to your CFO.

We know time is money, so we won’t waste yours

• Verkada’s 2025 State of Retail Safety Survey (in conjunction with the Loss Prevention Research Council) surveyed 1,000 retail workers and found workplace safety concerns are on the rise, threatening retention. (PR Newswire)
• Athletics brand On are skipping blockbuster holiday discounting—and reports that tariff-driven price increases have not slowed sales. (Retail Dive)
• Three in four consumers have experienced a late delivery in the past year, while 40% say a lack of delivery estimates stops them from completing a transaction. (Chain Store Age)

NRF always sets the tone for the year. This time, the conversation started before anyone hit the show floor. Our Times Square billboard made one point: returns aren’t an operational headache, they’re a loss issue. Judging by how often it came up at NRF, people heard it.

The show delivered sharp conversations, full calendars, and several “glad we’re finally talking about this” moments. That momentum continues with The Takeback Talks—a new executive community for peer-to-peer conversations about returns, fraud, and what’s working. No pitches. Just real talk from people solving the same problems you are.