Spanish retailers lost close to €3 billion to theft and stock loss in 2025, according to the latest Commercial Retail Theft Barometer, as reported by Euro Weekly News. The research was compiled by NIQ together with Checkpoint Systems and the Spanish retail association AECOC.
What the numbers say
- Total losses reached €2.932 billion, or 1.1% of retail turnover, up 4.1% on 2024.
- Theft makes up 81% of that total: 63% by outsiders and 18% by employees.
- 54% of businesses surveyed saw more theft by outsiders than the year before.
- 48% of thefts involve people who steal at least three times a year, and organised gangs are linked to 46%. The report notes these groups overlap.
- About two-thirds of businesses believe theft happens more often at self-checkouts than at staffed tills.
- 79% of retailers reported verbal or physical aggression toward shop workers by offenders. Many also say hiring security staff has become harder, partly because of that aggression.
Why it matters for small shops
The survey looks at retailers in general, not small shops specifically. Still, a few points carry over directly.
A large share of theft comes from repeat offenders. Fewer staffed tills seem to go with more theft. And the number that stands out most to me isn’t about money at all. It’s that nearly four in five retailers reported aggression toward their staff.
In an independent shop, the owner or one employee is often the whole team. There’s no security guard by the door and no colleague in the back. When a situation turns tense, that one person is on their own.
My take
Self-checkouts are part of a wider trend: take people out of the loop to save costs. These figures suggest some of that saving comes back as losses. I see the same trade-off in camera security.
AI is very good at video recognition. It can spot a person, an object, a movement. What it’s weak at is reading behaviour and intent. People have an instinct for when a situation is about to turn. When most retailers report aggression toward staff, that instinct is exactly what you want watching.
There’s an ethical side too. Judging whether a person is a threat shouldn’t be left to software alone. A human layer belongs there.
That’s the thinking behind Sentinel Watch: real people watching shop cameras, with privacy built in from the ground up, and the money going to the people doing the watching.
Technology can help small shops a lot. But on the shop floor, people still matter, on both sides of the camera.
Source: Euro Weekly News
