'It's personal': Edinburgh business owner reflects as shoplifting cases surge in city

Marchmont Hardware has been in Liane Phillips’ family for the last 39 years, with her mother Jo having first taken on the Warrender Park Road shop in 1986.

It is a thriving independent business in Edinburgh and along the way has welcomed a third-generation onboard in the form of Liane’s own daughter Kayleigh.

However, for the first time in nearly 40 years, the shop has had to install CCTV to deter shoplifters, as the number of cases skyrockets in Edinburgh.

It is one of many changes that shopkeepers across the city like Liane are having to make as the number of recorded instances of shoplifting reached almost 9,000 in the months to September 2025.

Liane said: “We've had to install CCTV, which we've not done for 39 years here. I know several other businesses around us as well. They've all had to invest in it because of the same people. We can't go and do stuff while our customers are in, we've had to move stock as well to make sure it's not easily accessible if it was to be targeted.”

Whilst businesses like Tesco and Sainsbury’s can factor loss in, Liane said businesses like hers can’t, with the measures having been branded “horrible” to have to implement.

She said: “We're small, we can't [factor in loss]. If they steal from us, it's personal. You're stealing from me and my daughter.

“You've got all the emotions. You've got the anger, the hurt. Every single emotion. You go through it, because it's your own business. You're stealing from me, you're not stealing from a big place. It’s like somebody walking in and robbing you house.”

The rise in cases in the last four years has been staggering. In 2021, there were 2,687 incidents recorded by Police Scotland in the year up to September. For the same period this year it sits at 8,983. But Liane said hearing the figures doesn’t surprise her.

She said: “I mean, on a daily basis, these people are cycling up and down the street.”

She is also sceptical that the numbers are a true representation of what is happening across the city. Daughter Kayleigh was on the phone to police for 30 minutes to warn them that a well known gang of shoplifters were operating in the area.

Liane said: “You report it, nothing gets back. So what do you do? Do you have time to spend that on the phone not serving customers because you're trying to report it?”

It has already seen Liane take matters into her own hands. One Saturday afternoon, she managed to keep three would-be shoplifters inside the shop while she waited for the arrival of the police - who Liane acknowledges are stretched thin.

“We got quite severely threatened, but I wasn’t backing down,” she said.

The figures are alarming, with Edinburgh second only to Dundee in the number of shoplifting offences reported per 10,000 people in the year up to September 2025. A total of 169 recorded shoplifting instances per 10,000 people was 40 more than third-placed Glasgow.

And as Christmas approaches for Liane, Kayleigh and Marchmont Hardware, there is an apprehension that things will only get worse.

Liane said: “You're watching who comes in the door. Before, you'd have a glance, but you're actually judging people more. If we had shoplifters in the past, which you would lucky if there was a handful occasions before all this recent stuff over all the years, it was always the same people.”