James Brown, Managing Director, Selectamark discusses the importance of crime deterring solutions and collaborating with the police and industry leaders.
My journey in the security industry officially began 23 years ago when I joined Selectamark.
I say ‘officially’ because the company was founded by my father in 1985, so in many ways I grew up in the business absorbing daily conversations around the kitchen table and even helping to assemble property-marking kits whenever urgent orders came in.
My father’s passion for the business was remarkable – he continued to be actively involved well into his 90th year.
His enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit and the strong sense that Selectamark genuinely helped keep communities safe ultimately persuaded me to join the company.
At the time, I had spent four years working for a Japanese trading house, gaining valuable experience in international trade.
Joining the family business was an easy decision, particularly as my father had built such a trusted brand.
I joined as a Sales Executive and my brother Jason soon followed.
In the early days I gained valuable experience in the production, finance, sales and customer service teams.
It has been an exciting journey, from the original Selectamark etching solution, to developing our patented forensic marking solution SelectaDNA and our own online asset registers.
My brother and I now run the business together and we are very fortunate to have a brilliant team around us.
I’m proud that we are known throughout the policing and the security industry for being a professional, ethical and innovative company with strong ‘family-business’ values.
It’s difficult to build trust and easy to lose it, so we always strive to provide our customers and partners with the best service possible.
It also means that recruitment is really important for us.
We always look for like-minded people, with the same values as us – honesty, integrity and respect are incredibly important.
Providing excellent customer service helps retain customers, but you need quality, reliable solutions to win them in the first place.
That’s why we invest so heavily in our management systems.
Our commitment to providing quality products, keeping our customer data secure and being environmentally responsible, is supported by our certification to ISO9001, ISO14001 and ISO27001 standards.
When we launched our forensic laboratory in 2019, we aimed to take our commitment even further.
Operating within a tightly regulated forensic environment, it is essential that we comply with ISO/IEC 17025 standards and the Forensic Science Regulator’s statutory Code of Practice.
Achieving and maintaining these accreditations allows us to strengthen our long-standing relationships with police forces, built on evidential reliability and collaborative crime-reduction programmes.
SelectaDNA helps stop crime from happening.
When we talk about deterrence, people often think about visible security, such as guards and cameras.
Yet some of the most powerful deterrents are invisible.
Forensic Marking has revolutionised the way we combat theft and recover stolen property.
By applying unique codes onto property, the technology creates an unbreakable link between an object and its rightful owner.
This means that even if an item is stolen and sold on, it remains traceable and that evidence can be used directly to connect offenders to specific crimes.
SelectaDNA has been widely used for 20 years to mark and protect valuable assets from theft.
Assets such as laptops, vehicles and construction equipment.
Recently though retailers have used the technology to protect valuable stock.
By applying SelectaDNA to items such as alcohol, cleaning products, cigarettes and even food, retailers can provide the police with evidence that proves recovered goods have been stolen from their stores.
SelectaDNA is simple to implement, scalable and scientifically validated.
However, most importantly it strikes fear into criminals.
It helps retailers protect high-value goods, it helps the police identify offenders with irrefutable evidence and therefore helps communities feel safer.
Major high street retailers use SelectaDNA as a key part of their loss prevention strategies, but in the summer of 2025 the Met Police also decided to invest in the technology in order to combat the organised shoplifting crimewave that was sweeping the country.
The Met Police already use SelectaDNA to mark and protect tens of thousands of their own work devices.
They also use our handheld DNA Tagging Sprays to tag and identify offenders carrying out street robberies and other offences on ebikes and mopeds.
The use of these sprays contributed to a 53% reduction in robberies.
In September 2025, the Met Police used SelectaDNA in over 100 major retail stores to mark valuable goods that were being targeted by organised shoplifting gangs.
Operation Zoridon saw raids on 120+ stores suspected of selling stolen goods, with 32 arrests and £100,000s worth of stolen goods seized.
Our SelectaDNA Search Dog was also used and as that operation demonstrated, the success of forensic marking technology depends on partnership, not just product.
One initiative that really shows the power of partnership in improving safety and security is the Stop Tool Theft campaign which was started by a Met Police Sergeant and a gas engineer who had £8,000 worth of tools stolen from his van.
It is estimated that a van is broken into every 23 minutes in the UK and each break in results in thousands of pounds worth of tools being stolen and livelihoods being ruined.
Working with victims of crime, influencers, insurers, industry leaders and the police, an estimated 200,000 tools have been marked with SelectaDNA at tool marking events across the country over the last year.
Stolen tools end up for sale either online or at car boot sales and unless they are forensically marked, no theft can be proven and organised gangs can operate with impunity.
Police forces are now investing in SelectaDNA for tradespeople, to help build safer communities and thanks to the campaign, MPs are calling for tougher sentencing for thieves and tighter regulations for car boot sales.
Technology such as messaging apps makes it easier for thieves and handlers to communicate and operate.
Social media platforms enable criminals to keep up to date on what crimes offer the greatest reward at the lowest risk.
Readily available devices enable keyless car thefts.
Even the use of illegally adapted ebikes enable criminals to escape crime scenes.
Social media has made it increasingly challenging for the police to maintain public confidence.
To help address this, the police have been running community engagement events where residents can have their valuable items such as bicycles, tools and mobile phones marked with forensic identifiers.
These markings create a unique link to the owner, making it easier for the police to identify and return stolen property.
We are continually innovating our products to address emerging crime trends.
For example, we have developed a compact handheld DNA Personal Defence Spray designed to protect women and girls from violence and we are currently collaborating with Openreach to deploy SelectaDNA solutions to identify and deter thieves targeting copper cables across the network.
The police understand that they can’t always reduce crime or secure convictions by working alone.
The police need technology, whether it’s a DNA Intruder Spray used to identify an armed robber or a property register to prove a bicycle has been stolen; technology plays a pivotal role in securing convictions and reducing crime.
The growing partnerships between police, security providers and organisations that need to protect their assets demonstrate not only that times have changed, but also that there is a collective belief that by working together we can make a real difference in disrupting criminal activity across the UK.
These partnerships really do improve community outcomes.
Shoplifting, theft, robberies and burglaries clearly have a financial impact, but it’s also the toll they can take on people’s mental well-being and the overall fear of crime that can damage communities.
The crime prevention and detection solutions we offer have recently expanded into electronic solutions, which complement our forensic marking solutions incredibly well. Some of these are already being used by existing clients, but they will be officially launched in Q1 of next year.
They will reinforce our commitment to prevent, alert and detect crime.
This article was originally published in the December edition of Security Journal UK. To read your FREE digital edition, clickhere.
