Productivity Soars At American Eagle's Distribution Centers

American Eagle Outfitters is a leading lifestyle retailer that designs, markets and sells its own brand of casual, fashion-forward clothing for 15 to 25-year-olds. This includes jeans and graphic t-shirts, as well as a stylish assortment of accessories, outerwear, footwear and swimwear. Keeping merchandise fresh and well-stocked through a fine-tuned supply chain is key to successfully catering to the company's target audience.

In 1999, American Eagle had approximately 400 stores and was mounting an aggressive expansion plan to open 50 additional stores each year. (Today, the company operates more than 900 stores in the U.S. and Canada.) At the same time, it began searching for a scaleable warehouse management solution (WMS) that could keep pace with this growth and be rolled out to new distribution centers (DCs) as they came online in addition to the existing Warrendale, PA facility. The company also wanted a solution that could pre-allocate all merchandise at any given DC, assist with vendor compliance issues, as well as handle case level advance ship notices (ASNs) and compliant case labels from all vendors.