MEET THE EXPERT: American Eagle

560 Broadway opened late 2025, putting American Eagle, Aerie, and Offline under one roof across multiple floors. Smart displays run throughout the store and into the fitting rooms, letting shoppers check sizes, inventory, and recommendations on the spot. American Eagle is not a luxury brand. It's a mainstream retailer at real scale, which is exactly what makes this one of the most practical examples of connected retail we saw all day. This store answers a question every retailer is dealing with. How do you use technology to make the store work better, not as a spectacle, but as infrastructure? None of it works without knowing exactly what inventory you have and where it is. That's the hard, unglamorous problem underneath every connected-retail promise, and it's the one this store actually solved. THE TECH The intelligence layer is Radar, an RFID infrastructure company, and Jonathan Aitken walked us through it. Overhead sensors read inventory continuously at the item level, with no handheld scanning required. That moves a retailer from the industry's typical 65—75% inventory accuracy to 95—99%. It also pinpoints where each item is exactly, so associates know exactly where to look and online orders can be promised without overselling. That accurate, real-time data is what powers the smart displays on the floor and in the smart fitting rooms. Radar runs across 1,550-plus stores today, processing more than 90 billion tag reads a day.