This one goes out to a particular AAFES employee who I won’t name for her sake. I will say this – the more I get to know sales-floor AAFES employees, the more I like them. I only wish the actual people working there were in charge of what gets placed – and replaced - on their shelves.
Who does make those decisions? Anyone? RobertM?
-Farva
I’ve got to try this Geocache thing
RobertM must have something to do with these decisions. He’s in Dallas. Maybe he could pass on a message for me.
LOL YES!!! Geocaching rocks!!
I’ll second that.
AMEN! AMEN!
Speaking of AAFES they’re making renovations to ours. And it looks like they may be expanding the selection of movies and games. About friggin time! Seen other bases that had stuff that made me drool. At least the AAFES mall has a Gamestop. To me, that’s a helluva an improvement.
LOL! pretty good, Ive had a few experiences like that geocaching, but no arrests, lol, just skewering my hand on a rusting barbed wire fence
The BX here at Whyman? is almost as big as the shoppette at Scott AFB! But the they sell guns, which is cool. Just for a size comparison between WAFB and SAFB, Scott had seven rows of toys, plus the back row, Whiteman has one… Ahwell, that’s what Walmart is for right?
Hey, what do you do at WAFB? I do like the guns counter, very convenient.
LOL!! NICE!!!!!!
At least overseas, I dunno about stateside, it was a combination of supply and demand, an automated system that left no room for improvements, and management that had a total disconnect with it’s buyer base.
I lived in Misawa for 4 years, and it was only in that last year that things got better. (It still sucked, but it was improving!) The electronic section in particular improved because they got a new supervisor who actually knew what his customers wanted (like movies that arrive within 2 weeks of their state-side release date, instead of a month).
Their prices were pretty craptastic though. Our TV was $300 more than the typical retail price in the states, and that’s with it being a display model and getting a 10% discount for that. But they could do that because Japan electronics are stupid expensive and that was their only competition. (It’s a great TV though! Glad I got it!
)
Pretty sure it’s one guy with a catalog and a see-n-say here…
I used to work in the AAFES warehouse at Bitburg and we always asked the same questions… we had tons of crappy stuff that no one wanted, and the rest was the expensive designer stuff that only a few people wanted. We were told that there were buyers in Dallas who ordered everything according to store size/previous years sale, but apparently without paying attention to whether or not the sales were made at 75% off. They obviously didn’t pay attention to the dress codes at the DoDD schools because half the time nothing in the BX was appropriate for teens to wear to school, thank God for Old Navy and JC Penney. Since I came back to the States I make it into the BX once or twice a year. Wally World has better selection and quality for the price.
OK, Called out!
This is all IMHO of course.
Since 9/11, AAFES as a DoD activity, has followed threat scares. Buildings have been beefed up, much as bases, to defend against terrorist activity. HQ, and many field stores have had evacs due to a supiscious box laying around. It is for our own safety.
@hound176, yes.. worldwide. look for improvments
@amy, think u have my email, if not Farva will provide. The only decisions I am involved in is working conditions and resolution for the AAFES workerbees, but one hell of a job.
@Farva’s blog..
AAFES, like many other large chains, uses plan-o-grams. Basically, aisles, and product placement, are standardised for similar size stores. Think about home depot? been in one? they pretty much look the same, you have been in all of them.
So, like all the other stores, these decisions are pretty much made at HQ. Add to that, like the other retailers, software is used to predict what product to be where, and when. It aint perfect.
I am watching mgmt watch this, but we all must admit, for all the problems, there is a reason for aafes. for those downrange, especially, aafes or no aafes?
when i was deployed to KAF over in afghanistan with the 82nd ABN from jun last year to last march, the PX there had almost everything we didn’t want but nothing of what we needed and when what we needed did come in, it went bye bye with in 24 hours. so for us to generally get what we needed we generally went to to duty-free ran by the dutch who were more then happy to start stocking what was needed in quanities needed at a lower price then AAFES. sorry not trying to sound like an ass but i had bad experiances with AAFES from the last deployment.
I gotta agree with you on the duty-free stuff…while in Saudi (Prince Sultan), I would routinely go to the Brit BX to get smokes….$3.xx for marlboros at AAFES….$1.10 from the Brits…hmmm….I think I’ll take “3 for 1 specials” for a thousand, Alex!
here at KAF, I’ have to say the only use I’ve gotten out of aafes is I was able to get a new mp3 player quicker than ordering it fro Amazon, even if it was $30 more. Other than that, they don’t sell anything we really want/need. Granted, 30″ tv’s are cool, but we really don’t have anywhere to put them in our 6×7 subsection rooms. We’d love some power strips or surge protectors that would work for US voltage, since everything here is set up that way, instead of the absurdly large number of European voltage items.
Downrange? AAFES is better than nothing. I have to go somewhere to get various morale improvement supplies, and people do need a place to get a laptop quick, even if there is only 3 models to chose from. The one nice thing is at least the one in Bagram had a somewhat decent selection of workout supplements.
I do have to agree with the others though. Who the hell needs a $1,200 TV in Afghanistan? Stocking what we want more often and cheaper would be nice.
Homestation though? AAFES needs to get more competitive with Target and Walmart.
Yes I have your e-mail. The only issue i have right now is the new POG it just doesn’t work, but then that seems to be true for alot of them.
Standard Opinions are my own disclaimer..
Amy there’s a cute little article in the newest “Exchange Post” about the Pogs and how they come up with them. I share your pain about many of them of course. The new system when they get all the bugs worked out of it is supposed to help, but like any new system it will take a while.
Farva, sorry to hear your out of what ya need.
I do have an interesting quote from CMSGT. Jeffrey Helm (AAFES SR. Enlisted Advisor, aka the top enlisted military person assigned to work at AAFES).
“If someone walks into our BX at the states and can’t find the new ipod, its sad and something we should fix. However, they can go outside the gate to Walmart or Best Buy. If someone deployed, comes off a 12 hour patrol and can get a candy bar and a drink, and for ten minutes sit and forget about being in the middle of a war for a bit, that’s why we’re here”..
I wondered the same thing about the DFAC items, why purchase 1$ bags of beef jerky when I could load up on them at the DFAC for free. Because (at least when I was deployed with the 926FW when it existed), KBR ran the DFAC and they could bulk order whatever they want and charge the Govt. for whatever they needed.
As for why things constantly run out, its part of the inventory process, often our initial orders either aren’t what we expect to sell the most of from the manufacturer. I.E. We don’t expect that Dial Fresh n Fruity shower gel will sell 10 cases a week, so we only order for 2. Until the system recognizes that 2 cases won’t get it and ramps up the cycle we’re in a holding pattern.
Same thing for games/Game Systems when they come out. AAFES does approximately 2% of the various game manufacturer sales, Walmart does 40%. So when they manufacturer allocates for the brand new game that comes out, Walmart gets 40% of its initial run, AAFES gets 2%. That 2% gets divided up amongst all of the exchanges world wide and so each store might only get 2-3 copies; which if its a very hot game it might sell out immediately, or the allocation might have gone to a larger store first and trickle down as the 2nd and 3rd run from the manufacturer makes their way into the warehouses.
At my last deployed, they had lots of crappy pop music, cheap T shirts, and very little in the way of batteries, boot socks, stuff we needed.
AAFES downrange – that’s a laugh. I was at the ‘Deid last year, and remember the huge 75% off sale isle. It was full of all the stuff you could get at the DFAC for free. Who made that decision? You could also get all the extra small PT gear you wanted. It’s funny that DEA mentions the sale history aspect of AAFES supply system. Now it makes sense – they get far too much stuff that won’t sell, then have to discount it at 75% off, so everyone buys it and gives it away (or sells on ebay). The automated system sees this as a huge success and orders more crap the next cycle. Sounds like the DeCA system – if it sells too quickly, they stop ordering it, becuase the store manager gets penalized for empty sports on the shelves.
It was about the same in Dhafra last year….”Hey, look! They’re selling Rip-Its!” seriously? how stupid did they think we were? They’d have been better off just selling the stuff straight to the DFAC for cost…would have saved them time and money in the long run…
I always envision the process going something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-12N3kVh3Q
DH works as a buyer for AAFES in Katterbach, Germany. Normal civilian world would, this would mean he tells management what’s selling, what’s not, and buy appropriately. Instead, he tells dallas what’s going out of stock, and hopes the new shipment arrives before a new plan-o-gram changes and they aren’t selling that particular item anymore. At least that’s how he explained it to me. Oh, also, seems the bigwigs that should come in once in a while to see how things are going, check out the stocks and warehouse, TRULY see what sells and what doesn’t (seriously – how good are swiffer wet pads without the swiffer wet…) don’t really ever visit that often. I can’t wait to get back to the states and hit normal stores again. And DH can’t wait to work outside AAFES…
working backwards, Gold Bond powder, I suspect was not in cache…