Beautiful Storefronts – Bulletproof Protection

Jewelry is all about its aesthetic appeal – matched with intrinsic value – that hiding a jewelry store’s is a shame! Many think that to secure their jewelry store this is needed, but that’s not the case. Ironclad security for your jewelry shop is possible in a dazzling way. Forget cold steel bars and other obstructions.

Prevalence of Crimes at Jewelry Stores

Few places of business house such high value, small products like jewelry stores do. It is challenging to run off with two large screen TVs. At a jewelry store, a criminal can fit thousands of dollars of product right in their pocket. Jewelry store alarms often aren’t enough – they are often defeated or don’t lead to quick enough police response.

Several surprising statistics stand out. On average:

4 crimes are perpetrated against USA jewelry stores per day.

Crimes committed against US jewelry firms lead to a loss of 1.4 million dollars per week.

1 out of 3 burglary events include violence and/or firearms.

4-6 jewelers are murdered per year in the US. Occasionally it is a customer.

 

On-premise jewelry store crimes of this sort are categorized into theft, burglary and robbery. General theft is the most common.

In 9 out of 20 cases, a successful burglary attempted lasted  no more than 3 minutes, thus not providing enough time for police to respond.

Robberies tended to be during the week, with fewer on the weekends. Tuesday and Friday are the most dangerous days.

Jewelry Store Entryway Security

Entry through a front door or window constituted about 60% of burglaries.

Therefore, those are the number one areas to focus your security efforts on. While there may be other important areas to secure, effort should not be spent there until these critical areas are protected.

Secure Jewelry Store Doors

Doors are the most common area. This is only natural. Doors are of course the most vulnerable façade because they are designed to be able to open. Many jewelry store doors are glass, to be able to show off the treasures inside. Some jewelers use what is called a mantrap. Of course, typical door glass – even of a standard mantrap –  is easily shattered. Even security glass often can’t withstand a hammer, rock or boot.

However, a steel door isn’t a good option either, as this blocks the view from honest customers.

We therefore recommend using high quality ballistic glass doors for your jewelry shop. This can also be used as a bulletproof mantrap door system. Though composed of multiple layers of glass and polycarbonate, these highly secure doors use precisely calibrated layers with all the same index of transparency, thus allowing the glass to be transparent just like a normal window. The doors should be connected to your jewelry store’s alarm system, and potentially other access control devices.

Jewelry Store Ballistic Windows

The next area of focus is the rest of the storefront, typically large picture windows. Often times jewelry will even be placed directly behind this windows during daytime. Here too, these windows are typically susceptible to based attack. We’d recommend instead using Level 1 and above ballistic rated windows to secure your jewelry store storefront. Ballistic glass is not effective without the right frame securing it. For the complete solution, one can expect to pay $120 – $150 per square foot of window area.

Here too, because of the special level of material used, it is completely transparent.

Reinforcing Jewelry Store Walls

Walls can be easily reinforced both during or after construction. For a standalone building, this may not be necessary if all exterior walls are masonry. If this is not the case for all walls, Ballistic fiberglass is the recommended method.

If building new walls for your store, panel can easily be placed within the wall. They can nail right into the wall studs, and then have drywall layered over – completely no difference is visible from the outside.

If existing walls are up, the panels can easily be placed over your existing store’s walls. They can be nailed into the stud right through the drywall. Afterwards they can be painted to disguise their presence.

Deploying these will protect your jewelry store walls from battering rams, axes, flames, storm debris, blunt objects, and of course varying levels of bullet penetration.

Jewelry Display Security

Though less common, robbery is a major area of crime. In a robbery, your jewelry is typically in its display cabinet and susceptible to either force acted on an employee or a smash and grab situation.  For the latter reason, certified ballistic glass may be valuable, however due to the risk posed to employees in this situation product security is less of a concern. Further, these cases will often be open during business hours. Therefore, this likely won’t be an area of focus for security.

Jewelry TL Safes

While effort should be made to protect the entire store, nothing of course beats the protection of a certified jewelry safe. This is where your jewelry will be secured after hours. This is by far the most concentrated area of valuables in your store.

Cognizant of how important this is to security, most jewelry insurance agencies won’t offer insurance unless a proper TL safe is being used.

Securing a Jewelry Shop At Night

Different threats are posed to your store during night than during the day. During the day there is risk to employee and customer life. On the other hand, there is deterrence due it being a much more volatile situation for a burglar. Further, protection is only needed as long as it takes to get police response, because employees or customers will quickly notice a burglary taking place. That said, thieves may be motivated to attack during the day when they know cash is also more easily available.

At night, there is (generally) no concern over it being a life threatening situation. However, there is not necessarily an ability to detect a burglar right away. One must therefore work carefully to install a jewelry store security system that can detect all manner of entry attempts.

However, not every system is perfect. Therefore, it’s important to secure your jewelry store with barriers that prevent successful attacks on your valuables to at least enough time for the burglar to want to move on to a different target.