The majority of American Eagle Outfitters stores can be found in shopping malls. American Eagle Outfitters currently operates 815 stores in the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In Canada there are 71 stores. The company also operates a website on which it offers the same clothing, often with additional sizes and styles not found in the physical stores.

Chairman of the Board Jay L. Schottenstein (who also has interests in Retail Ventures, which owns Value City stores, and DSW) and related members of the Schottenstein, Deshe and Diamond families own 14% of American Eagle, including shares owned beneficially through SEI, Inc.

Design

American Eagle Outfitters' designs can be described as a mix of preppy, athletic and casual, commonly referred to in the industry as "retro". It offers a full collection of products ranging from basic t-shirts, polos, wovens, cargos, corduroys and denims to more trendy and vintage-inspired graphics and logo-driven tops and distressed or hand-finished denims.

American Eagle Outfitters is often compared to the clothing companies Abercrombie & Fitch and Aéropostale, due to their very similar styles, marketing techniques, and targeted consumer demographic, as well as the department store private label brands Arizona (JC Penney) and American Rag (Federated Department Stores). However, American Eagle's product line is generally in the middle of the other two retailers when it comes to price (Abercrombie & Fitch often being more expensive and Aeropostale being less expensive) and trendiness (Abercrombie & Fitch offering more fashion-forward designs and Aeropostale offering more basic or toned-down of similarly-inspired looks).

The companies have each created picture logos to brand several of their products; American Eagle Outfitters' being a landing eagle, Aeropostale's a standing bulldog for boys and butterfly for girls, Abercrombie & Fitch's a standing moose, and Hollister flying seagull. The usage of animals for logos imitates previously established companies such as Polo Ralph Lauren (using a Polo horse) and Lacoste (using a snapping crocodile). Additionally, American Eagle emphasizes on their date of establishment, 1977, in their marketing and design, branding the majority of their products with the date.

Unlike Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters relies less on sexualized, scandalized advertisements and catalogs, and is generally viewed as more "clean cut" as a brand. However, AE, as the store is often known, occasionally makes references to alcohol consumption in the graphics and prints on their clothing.

Other brands

In addition to its namesake brand, American Eagle, the company has developed and announced plans for several new brand and concept initiatives poised to drive new growth as the American Eagle brand nears saturation in current markets.

aerie was announced in February 2006 as an intimate apparel sub-brand offering bras, panties, and dormwear targeting American Eagle's core 13 to 25 year-old demographic segment. The products are offered within existing American Eagle stores, intimates-only locations adjacent to AE stores, and select stand-alone aerie stores in key markets. The aerie logo is a finch, and it was intentionally designed to bear a slight resemblance to the AE Eagle.

The company's second stand-alone lifestyle concept, Martin + Osa, launching in the fall of 2006, will target men and women 25 to 40 years of age. Stores will range in size from 6,500 to 7,500 square feet compared to 5,000 square feet for American Eagle. The first four locations have recently been announced as Tysons Corner Center (McLean, VA), Fashion Island (Newport Beach, CA), NorthPark Center (Dallas, TX) and San Francisco Center while two more locations are pending.

The company has also indicated that a third lifestyle concept is in development that analysts speculate could be aimed at Baby Boomers (Born during 1946–64 period), and may offer homewares.

In 2001, the company acquired a Canada-based retail concept called Bluenotes, which has approximately 100 stores averaging 3,300 square feet. The concept targeted a slightly younger demographic, ages 12-22, and was positioned as a denim-driven urban/suburban lifestyle brand. Due largely to poor performance, the Bluenotes business was sold to YM Inc. in 2004.

AE All-Access pass

In September 2005, American Eagle started the "All Access Pass." The pass is a rewards card, where every item in the store has a point value (for example, jeans are worth 20 points). At the end of the three month period, the card holder gets a coupon for ten to forty percent off depending on the amount of points collected during the corresponding earning period.

Celebrity endorsements

Justin Timberlake, Eric West, Drew Barrymore, Ashton Kutcher and Eva Longoria are all known to wear American Eagle Outfitters. Currently the Australian musician Ben Lee is involved with AE and has been wearing shirts proclaiming their slogan "Live Your Life" to his concerts. The All-American Rejects also did a free acoustic concert in the American Eagle store on the Third Street Promenade in July 2006 as promotion. The characters in various new episodes of CTV's Degrassi also wear the clothing. (American Eagle used this as a way to advertise their line to the teen demographic of these shows.) The character of Jackson on the Disney show Hannah Montana, and people on the Nickelodeon show Unfabulous have also sported various shirts showing the AE logo of the eagle. American Eagle also provided the wardrobe for a few seasons of the WB series Dawson's Creek. American Eagle is also the official sponsor of MTV's Spring Break, and has outfitted numerous casts of both The Real World and Road Rules. Wanda from the Canadian show Corner Gas almost always wears AE clothing and are easily identifiable on screen as such. American Eagle was also featured in an episode of NBC's The Apprentice. American Eagle has also occasionally provided the wardrobe for Uranium, a show on the satellite network Fuse.

Dean Collins, who plays Mike Gold on The War at Home was seen to be wearing an American Eagle graphic T in the first episode of season 2, titled Back to School.

American Eagle began sponsoring "Veronica Mars" and "Gilmore Girls" on The CW Television Network with its "Aerie Tuesdays" campaign. This campaign features the "Aerie Girls," a group of young girls discussing the relationships of the characters on the shows in conjunction with their own troubling romantic histories. This stands to stark contrast to the intelligent women featured in the network's Tuesday night programming. Immediately following the premiere of "Aerie Tuesdays" on October 3, 2006, The CW Television Network's forum contributers had coined the term "aerheads" to describe the "Aerie Girls" and mounted an effort to call American Eagle's customer service line and complain about the negative representations of women in the new campaign.

External links

• Official site