American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) is a lifestyle, clothing, and accessories retailer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company’s success has taken the brand global, expanding into Central and South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
In 2019, AEOEU Ltd – American Eagle Exclusive Partner in Europe, engaged b.solutions to integrate with OTX Logistics, a fashion specialist logistics company with an expansive global network.
Connecting AEO EU’s ERP, Brightpearl, to this 3PL partner, enabled the automation of inbound and outbound messaging, dispatch orders and the associated paperwork. Dispatch to Europe became seamless.
Realising growth opportunities
Following success with logistics, AEO EU turned to wholesale. B2B ecommerce platform NuORDER was integrated with Brightpearl. This eliminated the need for manual wholesale transactions, saving time, ensuring accuracy and supporting efficient business growth.
Flying high on the wholesale expansion, AEO EU turned its attention to ecommerce. German multi-national ecommerce company, Zalando, could offer further expansion into 17 European markets. By connecting Brightpearl to an EDI; SPS Commerce, AEO EU were able to integrate products into Zalando via btwentyfour. AEO EU’s growth continued.
Having adapted to the new sales landscape in 2020, fashion retailer Next presented an opportunity for AEO EU; a marketplace for clothing brands to sell via Next’s owned platform. AEO EU’s stock was synchronised and the orders workflow was automated. With this marketplace integration opportunity seized, products were now available to another new audience base and business growth inevitably followed.
AEO EU’s growth had been significant in a short length of time. Their business had now outgrown OTX Logistics and AEO EU needed a new 3PL to handle the higher volumes. They turned to VDM Group, a tailor-made transportation solutions company, that were equipped to handle the sales volumes now being generated. Additional features including real time stock adjustments and returns were added for a seamless sales process at high volume and so the systems functionality grew too, with the business.
Seamlessly connecting Europe
The next challenge came from the very core of the business set-up. With operations in different European countries and each country requiring different POS to suit their own legal requirements, AEO EU worked with a smorgasbord of POS systems. With no overarching system, the stores in each country were, in effect, operating in isolation. b.solutions developed a custom build POS connector to pull sales, stock and traffic data through to a single location. First, from the Czech Republic, then from Switzerland.
