Expanding online shopping privileges to all honorably discharged veterans isn't a matter of "if," but "when," the chief executive officer of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service said at a meeting in Washington on Wednesday.
"We still have a ways to go," acknowledged Tom Shull, but he said AAFES is working with its sister exchange services to iron out some issues.
One of those is determining how to share dividends for morale, welfare and recreation programs when a Navy, Marine Corps or Coast Guard veteran buys online.
The issues "are not insurmountable," said Shull, speaking at the annual convention of the American Logistics Association, an industry trade association that conducts business with commissaries, exchanges and MWR activities.
In May, AAFES officials gave a formal proposal to defense officials to allow all honorably discharged veterans to shop at its online exchange store only; the proposal doesn't extend to brick-and-mortar stores. Concerns subsequently were raised within the Defense Department that expanding online access would lead to "benefit creep" — access for veterans to brick-and-mortar exchange stores and to other quality-of-life benefits.
Shull said he is adamant that this proposal will not lead to that — and has said "no" to recent talk about allowing DoD civilians overseas to shop online.
Other sources have said the proposal is not a done deal, and that AAFES still has difficult questions to answer about how the proposal would help not just veterans, but service members and their families.
AAFES must present its business case for the proposal to the DoD Executive Resale Board. The next meeting of the board has been delayed tentatively until the end of November.
That business case is critical, one source said, because if the idea is implemented and fails, there could be risks to the exchange and harmful effects on other parts of the military community, including the MWR system.
Shull, who has worked in the commercial retail industry for 25 years, said he looks at ways to increase the customer base from a retailer's perspective. "That's a very commercial way of looking at this," he said of the proposal to let veterans shop AAFES online.
He noted that the current customer base is made up of a finite number of active-duty, Guard and reserve members and retirees that has been shrinking with the drawdown of the military.
But it's also a matter of extending a modest benefit to veterans, including a number who have served multiple tours in combat over the last 13 years, he said.
"What can we do, in a very modest way, to honor their service that takes nothing away from active duty or retirees?" Shull said.
He contends the move also would benefit the military community, by increasing sales and providing more profits that could be contributed to MWR programs, and to improve brick-and-mortar stores.
Shull discussed the proposal as part of his plan to shore up AAFES' finances, and vowed to continue to provide at least $200 million to MWR each year.
AAFES has reduced its costs by about $300 million a year, including eliminating about 6,000 positions over the last two years. Officials have reduced their expenditures for shipping AAFES merchandise overseas from $145 million a year when Shull arrived in 2012, to $100 million this year. Those overseas shipping costs, known as second destination transportation charges, are paid for by taxpayer dollars.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
