Maintaining its aggressive expansion track, American Apparel has plans to open 400 stores worldwide over the next several years. To support this growth, the company continues to innovate with new technologies.

The retailer recently announced its success with RFID, as it has increased sales per store, inventory accuracy, customer satisfaction and associate productivity since implementing the Xterprise Clarity Advanced Retail Solution (ARS) system across 10 stores.

American Apparel, a brand for young adults, has over 250 retail stores in the US, Europe and Asia. Each store carries roughly 38,000 items. Since deploying the RFID solution, American Apparel now has the visibility and control of inventory at the item and store network levels.

Tapping a device that’s already known and loved by consumers, retail solution providers are offering an innovative approach to potentially streamline the checkout process by leveraging the iPod touch and iPhone.

As Retail TouchPoints recently reported, Apple is leveraging its own novelty in its devices to mobilize transactions within its retail stores with the EasyPay device, Apple’s iPod touch-based system.

Now the opportunity to engage customers with the ubiquitous Apple device is moving to other retailers, as vendors are unveiling technology that leverages the sleek, sophisticated capabilities of the iPod touch.

Global Bay Mobile Technologies unveiled its mobile point of sale (MPOS) for the iPod touch. The solution is designed to deploy a point of sale handheld solution with similar functionality to the Apple Easy Pay POS device. The sled component, which houses the iPod touch and comes complete with a mag stripe, will also be able to support the iPhone device within the next three months, according to Global Bay’s VP of Business Development, Harlan Eplan.

By analyzing customer-driven data from market basket analysis and sales by category Target Corporation is learning new ways to market and merchandise products within its 1,700+ big-box stores. The fifth largest retailer in the U.S. shared its customer-focused strategies in a standing-room-only Big Ideas session at the National Retail Federation convention in New York in January.

A primary component in the quest for customer-focused merchandising is implementing optimization technology, noted Eric Bibelnieks, group manager for guest data and analytical services at Target Corp. Most recently Target has focused its efforts on Planogram Optimization and Space Optimization provided by SAS.