Navy Exchange stores compete Walmart Amazon to fund future

In the rural plains of Northern Poland, at a remote base surrounded by farmland and pine forest, some 150 U.S. Navy sailors have a small slice of comfort through the Navy Exchange Mini Mart, a place for familiar snacks, hygiene products and the household brands many of them knew growing up. 

One of hundreds of retail stores the Navy operates globally through the Navy Exchange Service Command, or Nexcom, the convenience store in Redzikowo doesn’t make much money. But it’s part of a sprawling system that plays a critical role in retention, morale and ultimately, U.S. national security by funneling profits into programs that support sailors and their families.

Now, that network could be at risk as larger, savvier retail giants like Walmart, Amazon and Target chip away at Nexcom’s U.S. market share, forcing it to do what any good retailer does when sales slow: hire consultants and embark on an ambitious turnaround plan. 

“Even though we’re within the military, we compete for people’s share of wallet, right? They can just as easily … stop at a Target, they could stop at a Walmart, but we want them to shop here,” said Nexcom’s CEO Robert Bianchi, who has both a Harvard MBA and almost 30 years of experience as a sailor to inform his strategy. “It is a constant challenge to stay relevant.” 

Nexcom, which can trace its roots back to the 1800s, provides active duty military members from all branches, veterans and their families with lodging access, uniforms and discounted, tax-free products through its chain of outposts. Some of the locations are sprawling department stores, offering sailors access to household names like Home Depot, Bath and Body Works and American Eagle, while others are smaller convenience stores, similar to a 7-Eleven. Similar versions exist across different branches of the military.

The stores are both a perk and a critical component to supporting sailors, creating its own “virtuous cycle,” Bianchi said. 

Aside from offering low prices on household brands, Nexcom’s larger department stores near big bases in California, Florida and Virginia help pay for smaller shops in remote foreign outposts, such as the mini mart in Redzikowo. Across the chain, all profits are funneled back into the Navy and help to fund its morale, welfare and recreation programs, which offer sailors and their families access to services like day cares, gyms, counseling and community events. 

“You know you were going to be in a group of folks that were kind of going through the same thing that you were, right? It was almost like a support group,” Bianchi said of his experience with the programs while he was in the military. “The spouses a lot of times are left behind and they’re looking for connections and wanting to establish those relationships with folks that they can lean on while their husband or wife or whoever is out to sea for months at a time, and so the MWR team is really good at sponsoring programs that help all the family, not just the military member.” 

But sales have been in decline for the last 12 years, falling 19% between fiscal 2012 and 2024 and outpacing declines in total military personnel. The most recent year with data available, fiscal 2024, saw the lowest sales in nearly 20 years outside the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Meanwhile, dividends generated by store sales that feed MWR programs are a fraction of what they were in the past. Between fiscal 2013 and fiscal 2024, dividends fell 43% from $51.9 million to $29.8 million.  

“The pressure is there. I feel it, you know, and just like a retailer, we watch our sales figures and every day we’re looking at our retail trends,” said Bianchi. “What is at risk is potentially the degradation of this benefit for all those military members and their families around the world and so that’s why we take this very seriously … if we made less money, [MWR] may have to reprioritize some things within their budget.”

Nexcom’s sales declines have come at a time when retail sales overall have grown, indicating it’s been losing market share. Its stores have become dated, it’s behind on e-commerce and it’s lost sight of the retail fundamentals that keep customers loyal, choosing to compete on price at a time when shoppers are looking for more. 

“They have good things at the exchange. I don’t have a problem with what they carry…. but it’s just the convenience,” Angela Emerson, a Navy veteran and Nexcom customer, told CNBC during a recent store visit in Norfolk, Virginia. “Amazon’s never closed.” 

While the Navy’s primary goal is to protect the U.S. at sea, the increasingly competitive consumer landscape means it also needs to be a really good retailer, which sometimes means hiring help. 

In May 2020, Nexcom hired retail consultant Melissa Gonzalez, a principal at strategy, design and architecture firm MG2, to help redesign its stores and drive growth through its “Store of the Future” initiative. Over the last few years, it’s put $20 million into fixing its stores and plans to spend $80 million more over the next three years, a significant portion of which will be used to support Store of the Future projects. 

“They have a lot of unique challenges with the Navy Exchange. One, no two buildings are the same, so it’s really hard to standardize things that you would then roll out once you come up with a concept, because there’s a lot of different scenarios with the architecture, with the geography, with merchandizing,” said Gonzalez. “Also, when the Navy Exchanges first started, there weren’t so many comps like you see today, Target and Walmart and some of these others who have really grown. And so what is the repositioning of their place in the industry, to their customer, with all of this evolution that’s happening?”

Working alongside Nexcom, Gonzalez has gone department by department, figuring out how to reformat stores, jazz up signage and communicate value based on the local demographics and respective categories. 

Renovating Nexcom’s stores and figuring out how to merchandise them has been a challenge, said Richard Honiball, Nexcom’s chief merchandising and marketing officer. Some of the stores are so large, they offer everything from Tempur-Pedic mattresses and dishwashers to Estee Lauder fragrances and buzzy razor brands. 

“The least expensive item we sell is a note card overseas. It’s about 30 or 40 cents. The most expensive item we sold last year? A diamond solitaire ring that was over $90,000,” said Honiball. “How do we merchandise it? It is challenging, which is why we don’t try to be Costco and bulk things out, or we don’t try to be Amazon and carry everything. What we try to do is curate the assortments as best we can, and I think we get it right more than we get it wrong. But when we get it wrong, we listen to the patron and we adapt.”

While the company has not yet released its annual report for 2025, it says that the turnaround efforts are taking hold. Customer satisfaction was up 2.7 percentage points in 2025, and Nexcom said it grew for the first time since fiscal 2021, with retail sales up 3.2% year over year. 

“Any time we’ve touched an area, it’s driving more sales,” said Honiball. “We didn’t start off saying we’re going to create the Store of the Future, but we were two or three projects in and realized that in essence, what we’re doing is creating this new environment that is much easier, it’s easier to run and it’s more engaging for the patrons.” 

Earlier this year, CNBC traveled to Norfolk, Virginia – home to the largest Navy base on the globe – to see both an unrenovated Nexcom department store, NEX Norfolk, and its Store of the Future test shop, NEX Oceana, to see the changes underway and how they’re improving sales at the overhauled location.

As soon as customers enter the revamped store, the tweaks are obvious. At NEX Oceana, the lights are brighter, the floors are cleaner, the signage is digital and shoppers can clearly see different departments as they navigate the store. 

“People have become more aware of what a good setting feels like. Lighting is critical, right?” said Gonzalez. “You’re looking in the mirror at the outfit you’re trying on. How you look in the mirror is going to influence how much you want to buy that outfit.”

How assortments are laid out matters, too. 

At NEX Norfolk, the consumer electronics department featured an array of TVs on the wall with little branding or explanation of how their features differ, along with lots of empty space. It created a less than engaging retail experience in a critical section of the store offering big-ticket items that consumers consider carefully before buying.

At NEX Oceana, the TVs were more organized, branding was clear and the layout maximized the available room, allowing for more merchandise to be on the floor to drive higher sales. 

The new stores have also improved the way individual brands are displayed – especially in categories like jewelry, beauty and apparel.

For example, in the apparel section at NEX Norfolk, major athletic brands like Nike, Under Armour and Athleta are grouped together, united only by a sign overhead advertising a 20% off discount. At NEX Oceana, individual retailers, from American Eagle to Old Navy, have their own sections, creating branded shopping experiences within the store that allow shoppers to navigate between their favorite names.

Marta Cruz, a military spouse whose husband is a veteran of both the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Coast Guard, told CNBC that NEX Oceana looked different when she was there for a shopping trip in February. It was less crowded, the clothes were more organized and it was easier to push her cart around. 

“It looks good,” said Cruz. “It’s better now.” 

Some of the changes to the beauty section at NEX Oceana are already leading to improved sales patterns. In the past, the Bath and Body Works section was in a cavernous tunnel separating the department store from a since shuttered grocery store, far from the rest of the beauty department. Now, the retailer’s area has better signage and is situated with the rest of the beauty products and fragrances, leading sales to jump 40% between 2023 and 2024 at NEX Oceana.

“We’ve already remodeled 20 of the 25 main stores, and we’re seeing increases across the board. In beauty, our beauty sales are up in the high single digits,” said Honiball. “They’re performing three to 400 basis points better than the main chain.”

Some of the changes have also been about making the stores more agile so they can tweak departments and assortments rapidly based on the evolving needs of sailors. In the past, making changes was a costly endeavor that could take years, dragging on both profitability and sales while the renovations were going on.

“We don’t have the luxury today, in retail overall as an industry, but especially within military retail, within the Navy, to have these long drawn out projects,” said Honiball. “If consumer behavior is shifting, if someone’s going more toward certain brands or going more to certain products or buying in a certain way, we want to be able to adapt much more rapidly because the demands of someone who’s in the military can change in a nanosecond.”

As the retail industry grows increasingly competitive, and giants like Walmart and Amazon become harder to beat, it’s common to see warring big box stores try to copy one another and adopt each other’s strategies to take market share. 

That’s true at Nexcom, too, but the stores also have a unique value proposition as serving just people connected to the military. 

“It’s nicer people because we’re all military,” said Kathy Pawlak, the spouse of a veteran Navy pilot and loyal Nexcom shopper. “I don’t like going in the civilian nastiness.”

There are unique benefits that come with shopping at Nexcom stores. If a servicemember is in uniform, they get front of the line privileges, and if they’re having an issue with something, there’s access to “white glove service” to address their unique needs, said Honiball. 

“That’s kind of our secret sauce,” said Bianchi. “When a family or a sailor walks in here, one out of three people they’re interacting with probably has walked a mile in their shoes, right? So they get it. They understand if that kid is crying in the aisle and whoa, daddy’s gone, you know, or whatever, they get it because they probably moved, or they probably had a dad or a mom who was gone and they can really empathize with that.”

Though Nexcom has those advantages, it still has to compete in a retail environment where convenience and value matter more than ever, especially for the next generation of shoppers. Many customers interviewed by CNBC said one of the main reasons why they don’t shop at Nexcom more often is because there’s a Walmart or Target closer by, or it’s easier to order from Amazon. 

Nexcom has moved online, but its digital storefront can be clunky. Some items require customers to call in to place their order and shoppers need military credentials to log on. 

“It’s like this big rigmarole to try to get logged on. It’s kind of a pain,” said Melissa Wadington, whose spouse is in the Navy. “It’s just not worth it for me. It’s too much of a pain.” 

Already five years in the making, Nexcom’s turnaround will take at least another three years and millions more in funding. Unlike many other military programs, Nexcom is not primarily funded through federal appropriations, but is rather a self-sustaining machine through its own retail sales, making its ability to grow – while also affecting a turnaround – critical for its survival. 

“There is no time to sit idle in this retail environment,” said Bianchi. “I won’t lie to you and tell you that the competition isn’t fierce. It is. I mean, we fight. We fight to maintain that loyalty.”