Only a few days again, I noticed a Facebook notification that echoes one thing I’ve heard far too typically over the previous few years: One other brick-and-mortar military surplus retailer is closing down. On this case, it’s Tulsa-based Oklahoma Military Surplus, and the information was particularly gloomy as a result of the shop sounded precisely just like the sort of place I like to buy.
Right here’s how their website describes their enterprise:
We had been established in 1957 and have been in the identical location because the begin. It’s our need to take care of the requirements of the normal Military surplus with the comfort of twenty first century know-how. Our army gear dates from the Civil Struggle to current, with boots, uniforms and subject gear…
… and on it goes, speaking about all of the looking gear, tenting provides and different assorted jumble on the market at their storefront. Now, it’s all 50 p.c off, storewide, whereas provides final, ‘cuz they’re closing up store.
What a bummer, to see one other old-school army-navy retailer chew the mud, as a result of it’s getting more durable to search out one which’s as much as “the requirements of the normal Military surplus,” as their web site places it.
It wasn’t at all times that manner. Rising up within the cash-strapped northeast, no person I knew had some huge cash for looking gear, and the military surplus retailer was the place we shopped consequently. My dad’s deer gun was an previous sporterized Lee-Enfield .303 purchased on the surplus retailer; that’s the place a whole lot of his different gear got here from too, together with Chilly Struggle-era C-rations that had been nonetheless good when he opened the can 20 years later.
I did the identical factor once I began spending my very own cash. I wore military boots on my bike, and strapped a military backpack to the seat, carrying all my gear. My associates and I all wore inexperienced wool “commando sweaters” in duck blinds and deer blinds for years; they had been low cost, heat and quiet. We wore military jackets to maintain off the rain; previous gasoline masks luggage and medical satchels carried our calls, our shells, our sandwiches. We used military surplus canteens and cooksets after we camped. I wore a Dutch military knock-off of the M65 all over the place for years, not as a trend assertion, however as a result of I couldn’t discover a jacket that was better-made, and it was solely $5 on the surplus retailer.
All that gear we wore was heavy and never essentially high-tech, however it was well-made, high-quality stuff, and a whole lot of it’s unattainable to search out now. During the last 20 years, however particularly the final decade, any brick-and-mortar military surplus shops I’ve popped into have an more and more giant share of made-in-China tactical gear, outdoor gear and knock-offs of precise military surplus, and fewer and fewer of the true factor. The army gear they do have remaining is usually in tough form, or in odd sizes, or each. Or it’s oddball gear that, realistically, no person needs—scratched anti-laser goggles, or cadet berets, or bayonet frogs. Irrespective of how a lot you mark that stuff down, good luck discovering a purchaser.
It’s a protracted, good distance from the previous King Sol’s catalog my dad had, with all the pieces from tents to air drive parkas to Swedish military helmets to a web page with extra milsurp rifles than a schoolkid might even dream of. Turkish, Brazilian, Chinese language, Spanish and Swedish Mausers; Russian Mosin-Nagants; Czech Vz.52/57s; British Jungle Carbines; Egyptian Hakims; American Garands—it was a treasure trove. And on the dealing with web page, Colt AR-15s, Maverick 88 bullpups, Armscore M1600Rs, and plenty extra.
I requested the man who runs my native military surplus concerning the adjustments within the merchandise through the years, and the reply was precisely what you’d anticipate. On the finish of the Chilly Struggle, international locations had shiploads of apparatus to eliminate as they modernized. Now, most of that offer has dried up; a whole lot of surplus was bought off, and now, a few of it’s going to Ukraine (the provision of Russian SKS rifles has fully dried up in Canada). Within the U.S. market, GWOT surplus has began to hit the mainstream, however that hasn’t occurred in each nation, in all probability partly as a result of the U.S. did way more of the heavy lifting within the GWOT than anybody else.
So, the development will proceed as the normal provide traces dry up. And but, military surplus isn’t dying out simply but, as a result of whereas the fogeys are closing down their shops, there nonetheless appears to be an enormous demand with new clients, and new on-line gross sales.
Some shops have been on-line for very long time and achieved very effectively at it—the Sportsman’s Information involves thoughts, and Coleman’s. Varusteleka, in Finland, has glorious abroad delivery costs, and I’ve in all probability spent more cash on gear from them than another surplus retailer over the previous decade.
However there are nonetheless new outfits beginning up. Since COVID, ODGG (Operational Detachment Gorilla Gang) has been tearing up social media by storm due to founder @pnwguerrilla and his fixed posting. It’s not simply blatant marketeering (“Hey, purchase these camo pants!”). The founder (real-life identify Alex Roggenkamp) is consistently urging his clients to higher themselves, and he practices what he preaches, with commonly scheduled rucks that put all that surplus gear to good use. There’s no whinging about how heavy a wool blanket is, in comparison with an ultralight sleeping bag; on a tenting journey with @pnwguerrilla, you’ll use that wool blanket as a result of it’s nonetheless an intrinsically good piece of equipment that works in addition to the day it was issued.
It’s ironic, as a result of Roggenkamp has confirmed to be actually good at promoting surplus, however he by no means even set out to take action. He had been promoting hand-sewn pouches for net gear when he bought an opportunity to purchase out a army surplus assortment because the proprietor left the nation. He turned an $4,000 preliminary funding right into a full-blown enterprise.
Now, at the same time as brick-and-mortar shops die out, the ODGG retailer is rising; being on-line means extra eyes can see your product, says Roggenkamp, and he sees alternatives for much more development. An enormous fan of M81 Woodland camo, he’s not too long ago managed to suppress his gag reflex and begin promoting digital camo gear. However whether or not it’s old-school Chilly Struggle gear or trendy GWOT gear, what it boils all the way down to is, Roggenkamp wants to search out extra surplus for affordable pricing.
“There’s nonetheless a whole lot of surplus out there on the market,” he says, “However some folks assume they’re sitting on gold.”
But when he can get the gear, it appears he’ll haven’t any drawback promoting it. The ODGG retailer appears to have tapped right into a market that others have ignored for years; not aged collectors, not Fudds in search of low cost tenting and looking gear, however a motivated, youthful purchaser who’s in search of gear that may maintain them as they hike in full equipment, both coaching themselves or prep for the primary time, or rebuilding physicality misplaced since they left army service—all whereas the man who bought them the gear is on social media mocking them like a imply drill teacher.
Roggenkamp says that, to his information, no person else markets the best way he does, and he’s not even positive they they need to. He isn’t positive why it really works, besides he thinks perhaps individuals are in search of honesty, one thing that’s arduous to search out in any retail enterprise.
Possibly that is the way forward for military surplus shops—not as retail places that have a tendency to draw oddball clients, with a relentless odor of mildew and leather-based, however as on-line communities that may respect the gear for what it’s, and what it lets them do—get exterior and problem the world head-on, at a value they’ll afford.
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