Alex Geci leads loss prevention for Calzedonia USA, a subsidiary of global fashion group Oniverse. As part of a two-person team supporting a growing footprint of 100 boutique stores across the country, he needed a practical way to improve visibility and speed up investigations.
After seeing strong results from an initial rollout of Solink in 30 locations, he brought the rest of the U.S. stores onto the platform. Today, Geci’s team is closing more cases and resolving issues faster, having reduced weekly investigation time by 83%. They’re also able to collaborate more effectively with operations, HR, and field leadership, with a shared view of what’s happening across the business.
Before Solink, Calzedonia USA was relying on a legacy CCTV platform that created friction at nearly every step of the investigation process. Geci had to manually access individual store systems using lengthy credentials and technical information. Once logged in, even simple tasks like navigating footage were cumbersome.
When a shoplifting case came in, Geci might have the general timeframe, but locating the right footage could still take 30 to 40 minutes. From there, he had to download the clip and manually share it with district managers, HR, law enforcement, or anyone else involved in the case. Across a typical week, those investigations added up quickly, amounting to 5 or 6 hours of work for his lean two-person loss prevention team.
That inefficiency affected more than just investigations. It also made it difficult to identify patterns, validate concerns from the field, and support store teams effectively.
When Geci stepped into the leadership role, he immediately recognized Solink’s impact in the first 30 stores using it. Having one centralized platform to view, navigate, and share footage made investigations much more efficient, leading to a noticeable increase in productivity.
Those early results drove the decision to roll out Solink across the rest of Calzedonia’s U.S. locations. For a two-person team supporting 100 stores, the time savings quickly became one of the biggest advantages. Instead of spending hours scrubbing through video, Geci can now find relevant moments in minutes and share clips instantly with the people who need them, cutting the weekly footage review process from 5 to 6 hours to just 30 to 60 minutes. That 83% drop in investigation time has freed up more capacity for store visits and SOP development.
Beyond speeding up workflows, Solink has also changed what Geci’s team can realistically investigate. Previously, they might have received a tip from the field, but building a case would have meant starting from scratch in a system that made it tough to find and review footage. For a lean LP team, many of these cases were simply too time-intensive to pursue. Now with Solink, they can easily find the evidence they need, helping them turn more of those tips into resolved cases.
In addition to giving Geci more time back for store visits, Solink has helped make those visits more productive. Instead of walking in with a general sense of what may be happening, he can review relevant footage in advance and arrive with a specific understanding of any process gaps or coaching opportunities.
While Geci was the champion for expanding Solink to all stores, its value extends well beyond loss prevention. Field leaders, operations leaders, HR, and even some store managers now use the platform on a regular basis to review issues and validate what’s happening in-store. For example, district managers use Solink to confirm whether associates are following key procedures, like charging for shopping bags instead of giving them away, so they can address problems with store teams before they escalate.
That shared access has also redistributed responsibilities that previously sat with loss prevention. HR can now independently access footage to handle issues like timecard manipulation, instead of relying on Geci’s team to pull and share video for them.
This cross-functional visibility makes a big difference for a small LP team, allowing Geci and his colleague to stay focused on higher-priority investigations and broader loss prevention initiatives.
Looking ahead, Geci sees an opportunity for Calzedonia USA to unlock even more value by bringing POS data into the Solink platform. This would allow the team to review receipts and video in one place, speeding up investigations further and eliminating yet another legacy system.
For Geci, the benefit of faster investigations isn’t just the time saved. It’s the additional capacity created for visiting stores, coaching teams, reinforcing best practices, and getting ahead of small issues before they affect revenue. For a small team overseeing many locations, reclaiming that extra bandwidth has a huge impact.
