About
Built on Research.
Driven by Purpose.
Our Vision
Our Mission
Our Values
Our Vision
Our Mission
Our Values
The 6 Value Principles
Teamwork
Creating safer places takes teamwork, and our team members get there by building on each other’s strengths and skills. We value mutual support, trust, candor, and effective communications, fostering a positive work environment while enhancing our member’s experience.
Collaboration
We must collaborate both internally and with our key partners. We must communicate often and effectively. This means rising above the boundaries of our own team and thinking more broadly about what is best for our members, partners, and the organization.
Innovation
We have an obligation every day to create an environment that is positive, energetic, and mission-driven – an environment that envisions possibilities instead of barriers and develops innovative solutions to problems.
Capability
We must be highly competent at what we are doing. Whether it be as a leader, researcher, operator, or technology expert – our members assume and expect that the LPRC team will excel at the core requirements of their role.
Integrity
To truly achieve long-term sustainable success, we must build and maintain a bridge to our members. We must demonstrate the long-term value to our members and partners that our team brings and work with our partners in a way that both achieves our goals and improves their results.
Community
We must have team members we can trust, with strong judgement, whose character is beyond reproach and who are willing to share both the good and the bad quickly, accurately, and openly.
Our Story – Founding & Growth
A Bold Idea. A Growing Legacy.
The LPRC began in 2000 with a bold idea: that the retail industry could meet its toughest challenges not with guesswork, but with research, science, and a shared commitment to progress. Eight retail organizations came together around that vision, guided by King Rogers and Read Hayes, PhD, to build something that had not existed before — a community dedicated to turning evidence into action and ideas into lasting industry change.
2000
300+
Completed Research Projects
400+
Member Organizations
20+
“LPRC provides its members with the opportunity to collaborate and address the issues that pose a risk to retailers across the country. I would highly recommend that retailers and solution providers consider becoming members of this best-in-class organization.”
What started as a retailer-only organization focused on understanding problems has grown into something far larger. Solution Providers joined the mission, bringing resources and perspectives that helped expand what the LPRC could accomplish. What began as one to three reports a year has grown into more than 300 completed projects, including randomized controlled trials and peer-reviewed academic journal publications, evidence of an organization that never stopped building, learning, and leading.
Who We Are
LPRC Labs:
Where Ideas Become Evidence
In 2019, the LPRC moved into its current home at the UF Innovate Hub — deepening its connection with the University of Florida and reinforcing the spirit of innovation that has defined it from the beginning.
300+ Technologies
Virtual Reality & Simulation
Simulated Store Environment
Loss Prevention Museum
Growing Team Workspace
Where the Industry Comes Together
LPRC IMPACT
LPRC IMPACT has always been more than a conference. It’s where research meets practice, and where the future of the industry takes shape.
Era 1 — Walt Disney World
It started as BrainStorm. In 1991, the earliest version of what would become IMPACT was held at Walt Disney World — a small, focused gathering for an industry that didn’t yet have a place to call its own. The setting was polished, the group was small, but the idea underneath it was already clear: bring the industry together, not to sell, but to solve.
Era 2 — The Farmland Years
As the community grew, so did the event’s ambition — and its need for a home that felt like its own. BrainStorm left Disney behind and found new ground on Read’s family farmland. For the first time, the industry gathered somewhere built for exactly that purpose — no longer borrowing space, but making its own. The LPRC had built something the industry needed, and the industry kept showing up.
Era 3 — Home at the Labs
IMPACT eventually returned to its roots in Gainesville, Florida — and took on a more distinctive identity. Rooted in the labs, centered on research, and forward-looking by design, it became a conference unlike any other in the industry.
Era 4 — Resilience & Return
In 2020, the pandemic changed everything. IMPACT went virtual — and the community held. When IMPACT returned in person in 2022, it wasn’t just a conference coming back. It was a signal that the most meaningful work was still ahead.
Ready to be part of what's next?
Community & Membership
A Community Built on Trust.
What began with eight founding retail organizations has grown into a network of more than 400 members — retail chains, solution providers, law enforcement partners, universities, and associations, all united by a shared mission. The LPRC community is not just large; it is purposeful. Every member joins because they believe that the industry can be made safer, and that research is the best path to get there.
Members include:
Leadership
The People Behind the Purpose
Dr. Read Hayes
Founder & Director, LPRC
The founding visionary of the LPRC, Dr. Hayes has spent more than two decades building the research infrastructure that now serves 400+ member organizations worldwide.
King Rogers
King Rogers helped shape the bold original vision that brought eight retail organizations together in 2000 — and set the LPRC on a course of lasting impact.