A First for the Industry
Retail loss prevention has long been planned in rooms filled with the same voices. That is starting to change. On Wednesday 1 July 2026, women from across retail, security and loss prevention gathered at The Belfry Golf and Resort for a ladies-only golf day hosted by the Women in Security Network and DC Secure Link, among the first events of its kind in the UK. Smoke Screen was glad to support it.
The day was built as much for connection as competition. Attendees arrived for breakfast networking, heard from guest speakers, took a group photo, and sat through practical training academy sessions before heading out for a 9-hole shotgun start on the course. The day closed with drinks, golf presentations and a charity raffle in support of Children with Cancer UK.
None of that is small talk. Breakfast tables and golf buggies are where loss prevention managers compare notes on shrinkage, where installers hear directly what is and is not working on site, and where the next generation of security decision-makers gets introduced to suppliers, peers and mentors. Events like this are quietly becoming some of the most useful rooms in the industry.
Why Retail Loss Prevention Needs New Thinking
Organised retail crime has not slowed down. High-value categories, jewellery, electronics, designer goods, forecourts, remain prime targets, and traditional deterrents like CCTV and static alarms are increasingly treated by offenders as a cost of doing business rather than a reason to walk away. Retailers are being forced to rethink what deterrence actually means: not just recording an incident, but stopping it from playing out at all.
At the same time, loss prevention is no longer a back-office function. It sits alongside health and safety, operations and customer experience, which means the people running it need to think across disciplines, not just around a single camera feed or alarm panel.
Diverse Leadership, Sharper Strategy
Women have always worked in security and loss prevention; what is new is the scale at which they are now leading it. A dedicated ladies golf day drawing attendees from across seniority levels, from store-level LP managers to regional security directors, is a visible marker of that shift, not the cause of it.
The business case is straightforward rather than sentimental: teams that draw from a wider range of experience catch more blind spots, ask sharper questions of suppliers, and are less likely to keep buying the same solution simply because it is the familiar one. As loss prevention budgets get tighter and offenders get more organised, that kind of scrutiny is exactly what the industry needs more of.
Meeting Security Challenges Where They Are: Sentinel Go
One theme comes up occasionally in conversations with loss prevention managers, at events like this and on-site: not every location can support a traditional, mains-wired security fog installation. Forecourts, rural sites, load-shedding-affected regions and locations mid-refurbishment all present the same problem: reliable protection without reliable infrastructure.
That is the gap Sentinel Go was built for. It is Smoke Screen’s battery-powered security fog generator, designed to run in three configurations: standalone on battery power, trickle-charged from an existing alarm panel, or fully powered with a mains transformer that keeps batteries topped up and provides failover if power drops. It fills a space with protective fog in around 40 seconds and can sustain output for up to five minutes, and because it removes the need for a fused spur or continuous heater draw, it goes in without an electrician.
It is a solution that is landing hardest in the markets you would expect: Canada, where installers value the lighter, no-electrician install; and South Africa, where load-shedding has made power-independent protection a genuine buying criterion rather than a nice-to-have. Both are useful proof points for UK loss prevention teams weighing up protection for sites the grid does not reliably reach.
Why Smoke Screen Backs Events Like This
Smoke Screen sponsors events like the Women in Security golf day because the industry’s next generation of buyers, specifiers and decision-makers is in that room, and because a good loss prevention strategy benefits from exactly the kind of varied perspective the day brought together. Supporting a charity raffle for Children with Cancer UK alongside that was an easy call.
It also reflects something we believe more generally: security innovation does not come from talking to the same people in the same way every year. It comes from showing up where the conversation is changing.
On the Course: Security Without Borders
The Smoke Screen gazebo sat at Hole 3, the day’s nearest-the-pin competition, a natural spot for a captive audience between shots. As groups came through, the Sentinel Go unit fired on demand, filling the demo area with fog in seconds while players waited their turn on the green. We had a large gazebo set-up and we would use a Sentinel Go fog activation as a way of breaking the ice and having some fun with each group of players as they arrived at our hole. Remember, these ladies are professionals in the security industry so quite a few knew of security fog, some had even experienced it before, but there were many who also hadn’t. We love demonstrating the Sentinel Go, and the remote nature of the golf course is perfect, as it highlights the machines capability to fire fog anywhere.
It made for good conversation. Loss prevention managers who spend their working week thinking about which sites can and can’t support a mains-wired installation got to see, first-hand, a battery-powered alternative doing the job without an electrician in sight. That is a fairly direct version of the same lesson the day was built around: diverse perspectives shape smarter solutions to real security challenges, and sometimes the sharpest question in the room is simply, why does this need to be plugged in at all?
For the retailers and installers at Hole 3, the takeaway was practical rather than abstract: a forecourt, a unit mid-refurbishment, or a site with unreliable power does not have to sit unprotected while it waits for the grid to catch up. Sentinel Go, covered above, is built for exactly that gap.
Get in Touch
If you are a loss prevention manager weighing up protection for a site the grid does not reach reliably, or simply want to see Sentinel Go in action, our team is happy to talk it through. Get in touch for a free site assessment, or ask us about a live demonstration of Sentinel Go at your next event.
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