Editor’s Letter

Jack Trlica, Managing Editor

We decided to update and freshen the look of the magazine to make it easier to read and a more enjoyable visual experience.

Beyond a New Look

Hopefully, you’ve noticed that we’ve changed a few things with the print magazine. With the help of our talented friends at our long-time creative firm SPARK Publications, we decided to update and freshen the look of the magazine to make it easier to read and a more enjoyable visual experience.

This is not the first time we’ve tweaked the design of the magazine over the past twenty years, but it may be the most extensive. Everything from the LPM masthead to the editorial board page, to column layouts, to the visual on the cover. In fact, this is the first time we’ve ever featured an actual person on the cover. We thought that our interview with Keith White, LPC, who recently moved from The Gap to a significant new position with Salesforce.com was deserving of this major change. He is an example to our industry that a career in asset protection can lead to opportunities well beyond retail loss prevention.

One subtle, but meaningful, change you may not have noticed is that we removed the “Loss Prevention Magazine” tagline under the updated LPM logo on the cover. While the term “loss prevention” remains a viable term in our industry, more and more organizations are moving to “asset protection” or other descriptors as the LP function has evolved. We wanted to reflect that evolution and have changed the tagline on the masthead to “Asset Protection | Profit Enhancement | Retail Performance” to encompass the important impact of loss prevention on the retail enterprise.

It also reflects an expansion of our editorial to include articles on cyber security, omni-channel, supply chain, compliance, and other broad topics that LP professionals deal with beyond the traditional roles of managing investigations, shrink reduction, safety, and internal and external theft.

While, yes, LPM may be an acronym for Loss Prevention Magazine—just as IBM is an acronym for International Business Machines—we want LPM to be known for more than adding machines and computer punch cards, to extend the IBM metaphor. Hopefully, as we evolve the magazine over the next twenty years, the LPM brand will become associated with innovation in our industry that impacts the entirety of retail organizations’ success.

Let us know what you think and join us on our journey to not just reflect the evolution of our industry, but also contribute to the innovation and professionalism driving that evolution.