Your seat at the buyer's table.
When a brand owner hires MSS, they get two forces at once: a headquarters team selling and managing their business with the retailers' buyers, and a field organization executing in the stores. This page is the first half — the desk-side of the partnership, run less than a mile away from the two highest-volume buying offices in the channel.
Your seat at the buyer's table
We are the primary point of contact with all five exchange buying offices: assortment proposals, item and SKU setup, buy plans by door, demand forecasting, and seasonal promotional planning. We negotiate co-op — we know the going rates — and measure ROI on every promotion. During market releases, our embedded "implant" team works inside AAFES headquarters with workstation and system access, setting up your products and distributions from within the building.
We plan it, and we can build it
We work planogram strategy directly with the buyers — it's part of the sell-in, not an afterthought once the buy is set. And when a client or a retailer needs the actual layout built, not just planned, our in-house systems produce it. The five exchanges don't all run the same planogram platform; ours exports to whichever industry-standard system the retailer uses.
Empowering the Buyers
Our headquarters teams walk into every buyer meeting with the whole market in hand — sell-through, share, and inventory shaped into the assortment case, the promo case, and the reorder case. The machinery behind it lives on the Technology & Insights page; here, it wins appointments, and product adoption.
Retail-ready in days, not weeks
Certified in-house designers produce event assets, e-commerce banners, and print and digital materials matched to your brand guidelines — channel-ready without agency cost, distributed globally through our image portal so every store presents your brand the same way.
We keep it in stock, too
For select clients, MSS acts as the demand planner in the channel: our model writes the steady-state replenishment orders, and our teams layer promotional and seasonal buys on top. Few firms in this channel can run your inventory. We do it every day.
Your back office in the channel.
Fulfillment, margin protection, and administrative relief — included in the relationship, not billed alongside it.
Turn-key fulfillment
Testers, signage, POP displays, gift-with-purchase items, end caps, and event materials — picked, packed, and shipped from our global fulfillment hub to every military door worldwide. A turn-key answer to the friction of getting not-for-resale goods into military retail.
Your channel service desk
End-to-end EDI and purchase-order support, order management, and all retailer communications — an embedded back-end customer-service function for your military business. The systems doing the work are detailed under Technology & Insights.
Chargeback resolution
Proactive chargeback review, dispute escalation, and deduction accuracy across all five exchange systems — protecting your margin and keeping the military channel a clean, profitable line of business.
Set your planogram a mile from the buyer's office.
Our Dallas headquarters includes a working retail showroom — real store fixtures, real displays; your actual assortment is set the way it will be positioned in an exchange. Buyers and exchange decision-makers review programs here in person, one mile from AAFES headquarters, before anything ships.
It means your planogram is debated, corrected, and approved standing in front of the product — not squinting at a PDF. By the time a program reaches the stores, everyone has already seen it work.
Your model, not ours.
No two clients are identical, and no two engagements are either. Some brands hand MSS the keys — full turn-key selling, execution, and channel support. Some keep buyer strategies in-house and use MSS as their execution engine: our field force, reporting, fulfillment, and back-office infrastructure, with your team driving direction. Others prefer collaboration that is somewhere in the middle. We are flexible and listen well to align with your preferred approach.
In any case, the economics keep everyone invested: MSS works on commission. We succeed only when you do.
Full turn-key
MSS runs your entire channel presence — HQ selling through store-floor execution, data, and support.
You drive, we execute
Your team owns strategy and buyer relationships; MSS amplifies your reach with field execution, reporting, fulfillment, and channel infrastructure.
Tag-team collaboration
Working side by side with your team — our most effective and popular solution.