American Eagle Outfitters
MKTG 3310: Retailing
Professor: Dr. Gao
Retailing Financial and Strategic Analysis
Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters
Gross Margin Percentage
Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F) has higher gross margin percentage than American Eagle Outfitters (AE) due to its higher average selling price (ASP) than AE’s; the approximate average price for a pair of men’s jeans at A&F is $80 compared with $45 at AE. This is because of the different strategies between A&F and AE. A&F targets higher income level market than AE’s with more fashionable and higher quality items. To maintain the loyal customers, A&F is required to maintain its brand image with certain price level and one of the strategies that A&F has been taking is putting more …show more content…
employees at each store including models at some stores; A&F has more than twice employees than AE has despite of its similar number of stores to AE’s and A&F puts some models at some locations such as Tokyo and New York stores. This strategy results in A&F’s higher labor costs and A&F must charge higher prices to customers in order to cover the high labor costs as well as maintain the brand image. On the other hand, AE charges lower ASP than A&F with its lower income level target than A&F’s with its more basic and core fashion rather than high quality/price fashion items that catch the current trends; AE’s fashion products that responding the current fashion trends only account for 25% and 15% of women’s and men’s apparel respectively. For the last 3 years, both companies’ gross margin percentage has been decreasing due to the weak same store sales and worse inventory turnover led by weak economy situation.
Operating Profit Margin
AE has higher operating profit margin (OPM) than A&F despite of its lower gross margin percentage than A&F’s. This is because of high A&F’s overhead percentage as net sales led by the higher labor costs coming from more employees at each store than AE’s. AE’s higher OPM indicates its more efficient business operations than A&F’s in terms of dollars; AE makes more profits from the same amount of net sales than A&F due to the different cost structure, which AE has lower costs to operate its business than A&F, using the resources more efficiently. A&F has been trying to offer the latest fashion items with the future demand expectations, which did not work well under the weak economy of last 3 years. On the other hand, AE has been offering more basic and core fashion items to its customers at lower prices, which matched with its customers’ demands and result in more sales, less inventory holding and higher OPM. Before the financial crisis, both companies had similar OPM approximately 20% compared to the under 10% of OPM today. The large drop of OPM was mainly due to the recessions caused by Lehman Shock and AE had experienced fewer declines in OPM than A&F had due to AE’s more core product offering at lower prices. AE’s strategy worked well under such a weak economic conditions of last 3 years; customers’ spending for fashion items were weak and they tended to purchase more basic items at lower prices rather than purchasing high fashionable items at higher prices. The weak sales led weak same store sales, which resulted in worse OPM for both companies, but AE suffered less due to fewer declines in same store sales numbers.
Net Profit Margin
AE has higher net profit margin than A&F with higher OPM. Net profit margin indicates the final profitability after all sums and reductions (including other incomes and costs) and the difference between AE and A&F’s numbers showed that AE has been more profitable and had better control over its costs compare to A&F. However the difference of net profit margin between AE and A&F is smaller than OPM. This is because of higher tax payments of AE than A&F’s due to higher profit level. Overall, AE has been operating its business more efficiently in terms of dollars than A&F, which was led by AE’s strategy that had matched its customers’ demands better than A&F’s during the recession period and moreover its better overall cost control.
Overhead percentage
A&F has much higher overhead percentage than AE has due to its higher store and distribution expenses, which accounted 56% of net sales in FY11.
The detailed distributions of the costs are not listed in the 10K report, but I assume the largest source of the expenses is its labor costs. A&F has more employees than AE (more than twice than AE has), despite of the similar number of stores (A&F: 1,045 and AE: 1,090 in FY11); if you go to A&F stores, you will see models (men and women) standing at the entrance who are just saying hi to customers coming into the store. Look back the last 3 years, both companies’ overhead percentage have been decreasing. This is because of the slower store expansions and closure of unprofitable …show more content…
stores.
Sales per square foot
Sales per square foot numbers are similar between A&F and AE. Even though AE has more number of stores than A&F, its total selling spaces are smaller than A&F, which indicates general A&F stores are larger than AE’s. A&F has higher net sales numbers with larger selling spaces, thus the sales per square foot of A&F and AE are similar. A&F has the larger selling spaces due to its strategy aimed to offer its customers different shopping experiences than other competitors do by structuring its stores more fancy; A&F stores are darker than AE stores, be filled with its perfume smell and employees are sometimes dancing at some stores.
Sales per employee
AE has higher sales per employee numbers than A&F has due to the strategic differences between AE and A&F. A&F has more than twice number of employees compared to AE despite of their similar number of stores (actually AE has more stores than A&F). This is because A&F puts more employees at each store to aim offering better and different shopping experiences with better customer services and its fancy store structure, which would also contribute to build its brand image and loyal customers who are looking for more exciting shopping experiences. At some stores such as Tokyo and New York, A&F puts models at the entrance saying hi to the customers coming into. This strategy hiring models for standing at the entrance makes A&F stores different than other competitors’ stores and rather they would actually contribute to catching people’s attentions walking beside the stores, thus contributing to bringing more customers into the stores. However, these models could be considered as an inefficient strategy from cost perspective since the wages for the models are higher than the original employees helping customers inside the stores and they are not productive compared to those working inside the stores; this is why A&F has lower OPM and higher operating costs. On the other hand, AE does not have any models or special employees; rather AE focuses on the employees’ productivity and efficient operations, which resulted in lower operating costs than A&F and higher OPM. Overall, despite A&F’s higher selling prices, it has more employees than AE has, thus making the sales per employee numbers similar to each other. Asset Turnover
AE has higher Asset Turnover than A&F. This difference indicates that AE has been operating its business more efficiently than A&F for last 3 years; AE has been using its assets more efficiently to make more sales than A&F. The more efficient asset using at AE is because AE has been focusing on more operational efficiency including better inventory control. For example, the basic and core fashion items offered by AE is the strategy that focuses on more operational efficiency than offering higher-priced fashionable items by A&F. With the core fashion items, AE sold its items more often than A&F had done, resulted in higher inventory turnover as well as higher assets turnover. Other possible reason that AE makes higher asset turnover is its direct-to-customer strategy, putting more resources and energy into the marketing with new technology such as iPhone app, would result in higher sales. The penetration of using smart phones by young target market has been increasing, thus the new marketing strategy with new technology could help the increase AE’s sales.
Inventory Turnover
AE has better inventory turnover than A&F due to its lower selling price and product differences. Because AE’s average selling price is lower than A&F, AE’s customers tend to purchase AE products more often than A&F customers; it is reasonable that inventory turnover of lower-priced products are usually higher than those with higher-priced (luxury’s inventory turnover is much lower than food items). In addition, the differences of the product offerings are another cause of the difference between AE’s and A&F’s inventory turnover numbers. Because AE offers more basic and core fashion products at lower prices than A&F, AE had better chances to sell its products to customers than A&F; during the recession period, customers tend to save spending on their fashions, thus purchasing more lower-priced, basic and core fashion items than higher-priced fashionable items.
ROA
AE has higher ROA numbers than A&F has for last 3 years, which indicates AE has been using its assets more efficiently to make profits out of net sales than A&F has done.
The main cause of the different ROA numbers between AE and A&F are mainly due to their profitability including OPM and net profit margin numbers. The more successful AE’s strategy including offering basic and core fashion items and focusing on more operating efficiency in terms of better cost control, resulted in the higher numbers in OPM and net profit margin. While AE’s last 3 years ROA is somewhat stable moving between 7.5% and 8%, A&F’s ROA had been moving more volatile from 0% in FY09 to 5% in FY10. These differences come from the ability of cost controlling between the two companies; AE has been done better job for cost control than A&F, thus less volatile ROAs last 3 years. In addition to the better cost control, AE has been putting more efforts in direct-to-customer sales than A&F, which is more profitable than the sales at retail stores since direct sales does not require any physical spaces to display its products and result in much less operating expenses including labor costs, thus contributes making higher profitability
overall.
Recent Key Strategic Initiatives
Abercrombie and Fitch
Before the financial crisis in 2008, A&F expanded its stores in lower tier cities in the U.S. where have lower average disposable income, which did not support the pricing of A&F brand. The company also put its main resources and energy for the expansions of the international businesses, mainly in Europe due to the fact that international businesses were more productive and profitable compared to the U.S. business. These two strategies taken by the A&F before the financial crisis led the company weaker fundamental position thus resulted in the stock price falling.
A&F recently took two major actions to turnaround its business: slowdown of international expansions and improvement of US operations including closure of unprofitable US stores and better inventory management. With the slowdown of the Europe economy, the company slowed down the store expansions in Europe; the international growth came down from high of 74% in 2nd quarter of FY2010 to 31% in 2nd quarter of FY2011, and the company plans to open only 20 international Hollister stores in FY2012 with a strong focus on under-penetrated markets in order to minimize the effect of cannibalization, which is much less compared to the 107 store opens in FY11. A&F has been focusing on the improvement of domestic business’ profitability recently due to the weaker fundamental position in the US compared to its competitors such as AE and Gap; A&F recorded -5% same store sales compared to the positive numbers of those competitors’ in 2nd quarter of FY11. Even though the international businesses are more productive and profitable than the US businesses, the US businesses are still the key profit makers of the company, thus company cannot ignore the US operations; the US sales accounts 60 to 70% of its total net sales last 3 years (see the Seg_Info tab in excel sheet). A&F started closing underperforming stores in the US, mainly the stores in the lower average disposable income areas; A&F reduced the total number of A&F stores from 358 in 2008 to 310 in 2011. A&F has been also implementing a more conservative merchandise plan and shortening its product development calendar to aim capturing the current fashion trends better and decreasing the lead time in bringing new product to its store shelves. This could be helpful to improve the inventory turnover, better the same store sales numbers, thus better gross margin.
American Eagle Outfitters
AE has been also taking similar actions to A&F has taken recently: brand restructure and product development, closure of underperforming stores, increase direct-to-customer experience through using mobile advancement, and international expansions. AE launched new brand called Aerie in 2006, lingerie sub brand targeting young women, which was the new market for AE to compete. Even though Aerie is up against the most popular women’s intimate brand in the U.S., Victoria’s Secret, a different target market, mainly focused on young women versus older demographic of Victoria’s Secret, allows Aerie to fight off the competition. On the other hand, AE discontinued its kids brand, 77kids in 2012, which was new brand launched in 2008. This decision was based on the $24 million loss on $40 million sales. AE started 77kids with the success of Abercrombie kids, however, it was not as successful as Abercrombie kids, rather making big losses and AE decided to discontinue 77kids brand and shift its focus and resources to its core brands. In addition to the brand restructures, AE launched new fashion items to increase its variety of products such as denims, knit-tops, and shorts in new designs including new heritage fits, new washes, color palette, prints and patterns. This is the action to increase the weight of fashionable products in its product portfolio in order to compete in the apparel retail industry; the demands of more high-priced fashionable products would be expected to increase once economy starts climbing out of the recession. AE also closed underperforming retail stores in order to improve its same store sales numbers and profitability. Lastly, AE has been expanding its business globally with its franchise agreements with multiple partners. With the franchise agreements, AE plans to open and operates a series s of AE stores in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, China, Israel and Japan. The franchise agreements do not involve a capital investment from AE and require minimal operational involvement. In FY11, AE had 21 franchised stores operated by its franchise partners in 10 countries.
Sources
Abercrombie and Fitch
10-K annual reports – FY11: pg34, 60-61. FY09: pg56 http://seekingalpha.com/article/1102741-what-s-driving-abercrombie-fitch-s-51-stock-value http://www.trefis.com/stock/anf/articles/138341/publish-today-abercrombie-fitch-earnings-preview-trends-were-watching-15th-august/2012-08-13 http://www.trefis.com/stock/anf/articles/139088/abercrombie-fitch-near-term-strategy-looks-assuring-stock-good-for-57-67-push-reqd/2012-08-16 http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch_Company_(ANF) http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/08/24/how-are-abercrombie-fitchs-margins-holding-up.aspx American Eagle Outfitters
10-K annual reports – FY11: pg4-5, 17-18, 35-36. FY09: pg34-35. http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/11/27/american-eagle-outfitters-preview-encouraging-trends-we-are-watching/ http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/american-eagle-outfitters-ramps-up-mcommerce-strategy-with-iphone-app http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/02/10/heres-1-reason-american-eagle-outfitters-looks-we/ http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=AEO.trefis&#
Professor: Dr. Gao
Retailing Financial and Strategic Analysis
Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters
Gross Margin Percentage
Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F) has higher gross margin percentage than American Eagle Outfitters (AE) due to its higher average selling price (ASP) than AE’s; the approximate average price for a pair of men’s jeans at A&F is $80 compared with $45 at AE. This is because of the different strategies between A&F and AE. A&F targets higher income level market than AE’s with more fashionable and higher quality items. To maintain the loyal customers, A&F is required to maintain its brand image with certain price level and one of the strategies that A&F has been taking is putting more …show more content…
employees at each store including models at some stores; A&F has more than twice employees than AE has despite of its similar number of stores to AE’s and A&F puts some models at some locations such as Tokyo and New York stores. This strategy results in A&F’s higher labor costs and A&F must charge higher prices to customers in order to cover the high labor costs as well as maintain the brand image. On the other hand, AE charges lower ASP than A&F with its lower income level target than A&F’s with its more basic and core fashion rather than high quality/price fashion items that catch the current trends; AE’s fashion products that responding the current fashion trends only account for 25% and 15% of women’s and men’s apparel respectively. For the last 3 years, both companies’ gross margin percentage has been decreasing due to the weak same store sales and worse inventory turnover led by weak economy situation.
Operating Profit Margin
AE has higher operating profit margin (OPM) than A&F despite of its lower gross margin percentage than A&F’s. This is because of high A&F’s overhead percentage as net sales led by the higher labor costs coming from more employees at each store than AE’s. AE’s higher OPM indicates its more efficient business operations than A&F’s in terms of dollars; AE makes more profits from the same amount of net sales than A&F due to the different cost structure, which AE has lower costs to operate its business than A&F, using the resources more efficiently. A&F has been trying to offer the latest fashion items with the future demand expectations, which did not work well under the weak economy of last 3 years. On the other hand, AE has been offering more basic and core fashion items to its customers at lower prices, which matched with its customers’ demands and result in more sales, less inventory holding and higher OPM. Before the financial crisis, both companies had similar OPM approximately 20% compared to the under 10% of OPM today. The large drop of OPM was mainly due to the recessions caused by Lehman Shock and AE had experienced fewer declines in OPM than A&F had due to AE’s more core product offering at lower prices. AE’s strategy worked well under such a weak economic conditions of last 3 years; customers’ spending for fashion items were weak and they tended to purchase more basic items at lower prices rather than purchasing high fashionable items at higher prices. The weak sales led weak same store sales, which resulted in worse OPM for both companies, but AE suffered less due to fewer declines in same store sales numbers.
Net Profit Margin
AE has higher net profit margin than A&F with higher OPM. Net profit margin indicates the final profitability after all sums and reductions (including other incomes and costs) and the difference between AE and A&F’s numbers showed that AE has been more profitable and had better control over its costs compare to A&F. However the difference of net profit margin between AE and A&F is smaller than OPM. This is because of higher tax payments of AE than A&F’s due to higher profit level. Overall, AE has been operating its business more efficiently in terms of dollars than A&F, which was led by AE’s strategy that had matched its customers’ demands better than A&F’s during the recession period and moreover its better overall cost control.
Overhead percentage
A&F has much higher overhead percentage than AE has due to its higher store and distribution expenses, which accounted 56% of net sales in FY11.
The detailed distributions of the costs are not listed in the 10K report, but I assume the largest source of the expenses is its labor costs. A&F has more employees than AE (more than twice than AE has), despite of the similar number of stores (A&F: 1,045 and AE: 1,090 in FY11); if you go to A&F stores, you will see models (men and women) standing at the entrance who are just saying hi to customers coming into the store. Look back the last 3 years, both companies’ overhead percentage have been decreasing. This is because of the slower store expansions and closure of unprofitable …show more content…
stores.
Sales per square foot
Sales per square foot numbers are similar between A&F and AE. Even though AE has more number of stores than A&F, its total selling spaces are smaller than A&F, which indicates general A&F stores are larger than AE’s. A&F has higher net sales numbers with larger selling spaces, thus the sales per square foot of A&F and AE are similar. A&F has the larger selling spaces due to its strategy aimed to offer its customers different shopping experiences than other competitors do by structuring its stores more fancy; A&F stores are darker than AE stores, be filled with its perfume smell and employees are sometimes dancing at some stores.
Sales per employee
AE has higher sales per employee numbers than A&F has due to the strategic differences between AE and A&F. A&F has more than twice number of employees compared to AE despite of their similar number of stores (actually AE has more stores than A&F). This is because A&F puts more employees at each store to aim offering better and different shopping experiences with better customer services and its fancy store structure, which would also contribute to build its brand image and loyal customers who are looking for more exciting shopping experiences. At some stores such as Tokyo and New York, A&F puts models at the entrance saying hi to the customers coming into. This strategy hiring models for standing at the entrance makes A&F stores different than other competitors’ stores and rather they would actually contribute to catching people’s attentions walking beside the stores, thus contributing to bringing more customers into the stores. However, these models could be considered as an inefficient strategy from cost perspective since the wages for the models are higher than the original employees helping customers inside the stores and they are not productive compared to those working inside the stores; this is why A&F has lower OPM and higher operating costs. On the other hand, AE does not have any models or special employees; rather AE focuses on the employees’ productivity and efficient operations, which resulted in lower operating costs than A&F and higher OPM. Overall, despite A&F’s higher selling prices, it has more employees than AE has, thus making the sales per employee numbers similar to each other. Asset Turnover
AE has higher Asset Turnover than A&F. This difference indicates that AE has been operating its business more efficiently than A&F for last 3 years; AE has been using its assets more efficiently to make more sales than A&F. The more efficient asset using at AE is because AE has been focusing on more operational efficiency including better inventory control. For example, the basic and core fashion items offered by AE is the strategy that focuses on more operational efficiency than offering higher-priced fashionable items by A&F. With the core fashion items, AE sold its items more often than A&F had done, resulted in higher inventory turnover as well as higher assets turnover. Other possible reason that AE makes higher asset turnover is its direct-to-customer strategy, putting more resources and energy into the marketing with new technology such as iPhone app, would result in higher sales. The penetration of using smart phones by young target market has been increasing, thus the new marketing strategy with new technology could help the increase AE’s sales.
Inventory Turnover
AE has better inventory turnover than A&F due to its lower selling price and product differences. Because AE’s average selling price is lower than A&F, AE’s customers tend to purchase AE products more often than A&F customers; it is reasonable that inventory turnover of lower-priced products are usually higher than those with higher-priced (luxury’s inventory turnover is much lower than food items). In addition, the differences of the product offerings are another cause of the difference between AE’s and A&F’s inventory turnover numbers. Because AE offers more basic and core fashion products at lower prices than A&F, AE had better chances to sell its products to customers than A&F; during the recession period, customers tend to save spending on their fashions, thus purchasing more lower-priced, basic and core fashion items than higher-priced fashionable items.
ROA
AE has higher ROA numbers than A&F has for last 3 years, which indicates AE has been using its assets more efficiently to make profits out of net sales than A&F has done.
The main cause of the different ROA numbers between AE and A&F are mainly due to their profitability including OPM and net profit margin numbers. The more successful AE’s strategy including offering basic and core fashion items and focusing on more operating efficiency in terms of better cost control, resulted in the higher numbers in OPM and net profit margin. While AE’s last 3 years ROA is somewhat stable moving between 7.5% and 8%, A&F’s ROA had been moving more volatile from 0% in FY09 to 5% in FY10. These differences come from the ability of cost controlling between the two companies; AE has been done better job for cost control than A&F, thus less volatile ROAs last 3 years. In addition to the better cost control, AE has been putting more efforts in direct-to-customer sales than A&F, which is more profitable than the sales at retail stores since direct sales does not require any physical spaces to display its products and result in much less operating expenses including labor costs, thus contributes making higher profitability
overall.
Recent Key Strategic Initiatives
Abercrombie and Fitch
Before the financial crisis in 2008, A&F expanded its stores in lower tier cities in the U.S. where have lower average disposable income, which did not support the pricing of A&F brand. The company also put its main resources and energy for the expansions of the international businesses, mainly in Europe due to the fact that international businesses were more productive and profitable compared to the U.S. business. These two strategies taken by the A&F before the financial crisis led the company weaker fundamental position thus resulted in the stock price falling.
A&F recently took two major actions to turnaround its business: slowdown of international expansions and improvement of US operations including closure of unprofitable US stores and better inventory management. With the slowdown of the Europe economy, the company slowed down the store expansions in Europe; the international growth came down from high of 74% in 2nd quarter of FY2010 to 31% in 2nd quarter of FY2011, and the company plans to open only 20 international Hollister stores in FY2012 with a strong focus on under-penetrated markets in order to minimize the effect of cannibalization, which is much less compared to the 107 store opens in FY11. A&F has been focusing on the improvement of domestic business’ profitability recently due to the weaker fundamental position in the US compared to its competitors such as AE and Gap; A&F recorded -5% same store sales compared to the positive numbers of those competitors’ in 2nd quarter of FY11. Even though the international businesses are more productive and profitable than the US businesses, the US businesses are still the key profit makers of the company, thus company cannot ignore the US operations; the US sales accounts 60 to 70% of its total net sales last 3 years (see the Seg_Info tab in excel sheet). A&F started closing underperforming stores in the US, mainly the stores in the lower average disposable income areas; A&F reduced the total number of A&F stores from 358 in 2008 to 310 in 2011. A&F has been also implementing a more conservative merchandise plan and shortening its product development calendar to aim capturing the current fashion trends better and decreasing the lead time in bringing new product to its store shelves. This could be helpful to improve the inventory turnover, better the same store sales numbers, thus better gross margin.
American Eagle Outfitters
AE has been also taking similar actions to A&F has taken recently: brand restructure and product development, closure of underperforming stores, increase direct-to-customer experience through using mobile advancement, and international expansions. AE launched new brand called Aerie in 2006, lingerie sub brand targeting young women, which was the new market for AE to compete. Even though Aerie is up against the most popular women’s intimate brand in the U.S., Victoria’s Secret, a different target market, mainly focused on young women versus older demographic of Victoria’s Secret, allows Aerie to fight off the competition. On the other hand, AE discontinued its kids brand, 77kids in 2012, which was new brand launched in 2008. This decision was based on the $24 million loss on $40 million sales. AE started 77kids with the success of Abercrombie kids, however, it was not as successful as Abercrombie kids, rather making big losses and AE decided to discontinue 77kids brand and shift its focus and resources to its core brands. In addition to the brand restructures, AE launched new fashion items to increase its variety of products such as denims, knit-tops, and shorts in new designs including new heritage fits, new washes, color palette, prints and patterns. This is the action to increase the weight of fashionable products in its product portfolio in order to compete in the apparel retail industry; the demands of more high-priced fashionable products would be expected to increase once economy starts climbing out of the recession. AE also closed underperforming retail stores in order to improve its same store sales numbers and profitability. Lastly, AE has been expanding its business globally with its franchise agreements with multiple partners. With the franchise agreements, AE plans to open and operates a series s of AE stores in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, China, Israel and Japan. The franchise agreements do not involve a capital investment from AE and require minimal operational involvement. In FY11, AE had 21 franchised stores operated by its franchise partners in 10 countries.
Sources
Abercrombie and Fitch
10-K annual reports – FY11: pg34, 60-61. FY09: pg56 http://seekingalpha.com/article/1102741-what-s-driving-abercrombie-fitch-s-51-stock-value http://www.trefis.com/stock/anf/articles/138341/publish-today-abercrombie-fitch-earnings-preview-trends-were-watching-15th-august/2012-08-13 http://www.trefis.com/stock/anf/articles/139088/abercrombie-fitch-near-term-strategy-looks-assuring-stock-good-for-57-67-push-reqd/2012-08-16 http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch_Company_(ANF) http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/08/24/how-are-abercrombie-fitchs-margins-holding-up.aspx American Eagle Outfitters
10-K annual reports – FY11: pg4-5, 17-18, 35-36. FY09: pg34-35. http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/11/27/american-eagle-outfitters-preview-encouraging-trends-we-are-watching/ http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/american-eagle-outfitters-ramps-up-mcommerce-strategy-with-iphone-app http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/02/10/heres-1-reason-american-eagle-outfitters-looks-we/ http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=AEO.trefis&#