A small business’s front door is shattered as two burlgars break in. Surveillance cameras from inside Lola Saratoga, a Saratoga Springs, New York, store that specialize pre-owned luxury designer handbags, shows the two men go straight for the back.
In under 90 seconds they grab the Birkin, Chanel and Christian Dior bags, owner Megan Druckman tells Inside Edition Digital’s Leigh Scheps.
“I know that they were in our store previously. There’s no way they would know exactly where to go. They even bypassed the two front cases, which do have Louis Vuitton handbags,” Druckman says.
The alarm to her store went off around 5:00 in the morning on Dec. 12. “My first reaction was that this has to be a nightmare,” she recalled of answering her phone in the middle of the night with police on the other line.
Druckman showed up in her pajamas to find crime scene tape and about $120,000 worth of merchandise gone. Her holiday spirit was also stolen.
“We were in a great stock position to have an amazing December. Our staff was pumped. They were excited to sell this holiday season, and with half of our inventory missing, it’s impossible to make those sales figures up,” she explains. “It takes weeks and months to find these items, to authenticate them, to procure an assortment in our store. We’ve been building this inventory for our holiday season since October.”
With a background in corporate retail, Druckman started her business ten years ago after selling off items in her closet. It grew from there.
Now she has two brick-and-mortar stores.
“We started originally in a very tiny 300-square-foot storefront, and I had maybe an eighth of the inventory that I currently have. So to see someone just come in and in 90 seconds take your livelihood and your dream and everything you’ve worked for 10 years is just devastating,” she says.
“You hear about these smash and grab robberies in large cities at big box retailers, but for it to happen to a small business is devastating. I mean, this is something that can easily cripple a business.”
In Old Town Spring, Texas, JJ’s closet, a similar mom and pop shop that sells pre-owned luxury handbags, was also a victim to smash and grab burglars. Four men were seen on camera making off with as many Louis Vuitton bags as they could carry.
“While the town experiences shoplifting every now and then, nobody has ever experienced the brazenness that was on full display as 4 masked robbers assaulted our family-owned small business on November 12, 2023, – the day I will not ever forget as an entrepreneur,” the owners told Inside Edition Digital over email. “The images of 4 masked men violating my store and the sounds of glass cabinets smashed – I still see and hear them clearly in my head. Those thieves clearly do not belong to Old Town Spring.”
Like JJ’s Closet, Lola Saratoga has added extra security at the store to prevent this from happening again.
Saratoga Springs Police are looking for two male suspects who arrived and left in a dark-colored sedan. It says it will be increasing patrols in the downtown area overnight and throughout the remainder of the holiday season. Anyone that may have information is asked to contact Investigator John Guzek at jguzek@saratogapolice.org.
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