American Apparel Deploys Smart Safes To Drive Down Theft

May 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Bob Johns, associate editor

The specialty apparel retailer uses smart-safe technology to protect its assets and employees.

Cash is an integral part of retail, even with the growth of payments such as debit and credit. However, cash handling can be timeconsuming, relies on associates to be accurate, and can place associates at risk in robbery situations. American Apparel, the specialty fashion retailer, needed to find a better way to handle cash to save time, increase accuracy, and improve safety for its associates.

American Apparel is a technology-driven company, implementing progressive e-commerce and RFID programs over the past two years, but when it came to cash handling, “That was the one aspect of our operations that was not so technologically advanced, and our visibility to our retail stores and securing the cash was limited,” according to Blue Montez, director of asset protection with American Apparel. “Like other retailers, we had issues with cash variances and at times could not identify the source of the variance.”