On a chilly February afternoon, Logan McGrath and Mack Fritz were preparing to shoot a video promoting the green Austrian Army fatigue shirts they sold at Americana Pipedream Apparel, the online military surplus store that started out of his parents’ basement in Appleton. , Wis., three years ago.
After outgrowing their last two locations and attracting the attention of clients like singer Post Malone, they had recently settled into a new space: a former furniture showroom turned 24,000-square-foot warehouse. The large space was already full. Afghan war rugs were stacked in a corner. Tall laundry bins contained hundreds of US military canteens and British camouflage uniforms and equipment of today’s issue. Cans of energy drinks were stacked next to the fridge.
More than a dozen employees, mostly in their 20s and friends of Mr. McGrath’s since high school, crisscrossed the site on scooters, Segways and skateboards. They collected Greek camouflage jackets, West German military patches and packages of vanilla cake from American military rations, assembling them for orders. In the back of the warehouse, they sorted through pallets of surplus that had arrived from Indonesia and Pakistan, including about 1,500 gray-green Austrian KAZ-75 T-shirts.
Mr McGrath and Mr Fritz, both 21, worked on a video to market the shirts to their popular Instagram page. The two young men gathered around a folding table in Mr. Fritz’s office, the old paint studio of the furniture business, and scrolled through the script they were working on.
“Have you ever seen Austrian drip go so hard?” Mr. Fritz, wearing an orange down jacket, suggested.
Mr McGrath, wearing round and round Warby Parker glasses, said the ‘drip’ was ‘played out, not exciting enough’.
But Mr. Fritz beat him.
They settled on “the Austrian KAZ-75 pitch shirt is where utility meets drop.” Outside, Mr McGrath, modeling the outfit, delivered the line while Mr Fritz recorded on a mounted digital camera.
“Surp” sale
Americana Pipedream is part of a wave of small online companies run by 20-somethings who deftly use social media to sell military surplus — or “surp,” as they call it. Fueled by a goofy and self-consciously Gen Z marketing strategy on Instagram and TikTok, the young men behind the business said their sales topped $6 million last year, and their staff of 22 filled an average of 11,000 orders a month.
Mr. Fritz and Mr. McGrath are friendly with shop owners like Covey Surplus, Misty Mountain Supply, Kruschiki Supply Company and the slightly bigger one Kommando store, stores that take a similar approach to business and, like Americana Pipedream, primarily serve a young customer base that may never have set foot in a Navy Surplus store. Many of these brick and mortar stores were in a steady decline for years and are often associated with dark, dusty rooms piled high with smelly canvas and imitation equipment.
“A lot of your traditional stores that you saw in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and even the early 2000s were just military surplus — those stores started going down the street,” Kyle said. MacNall, the director of operations for the Army Navy Military Expo Trade Show.
Surplus stores exploded in the United States after World War II. The government had A surplus of $34 billion material at the end of the war and sold it in large lots at auctions, where would-be store owners could buy a store’s worth of stock.
The result was an explosion of surplus shops selling everything from boots and compasses to folding chairs and jackets, first to workers and outdoorsmen, then to students and young people. During the 1960s and 1970s, the surplus store style became identified with the country’s counterculture movements and became a staple of American style.
But as the military surplus from the war dried up, so did America’s surplus stocks. Looking further afield, some were able to bolster their stocks with new material coming out of former Soviet Bloc countries, but the downturn had already begun. Now, there is a resurgence.
“We all talk to each other,” said Weston Covey, the 25-year-old owner of Nevada, Mo.-based Covey Surplus. “I think there’s about 12 to 15 stores that I’ve had a group chat about, and we’re all talking about suppliers and problems that we have.”
An American story
Mr McGrath and Aiden Olson, who have been friends since high school, said they fell into surplus almost by accident.
It was January 2021, and Mr. McGrath had moved back home to Appleton, a small town along a river known for its paper mills, after dropping out of Gettysburg College after one semester. He and Mr. Olson, 22, both graduated high school in 2020, at the height of Covid-19 distance education, and college wasn’t what they expected. But back in Appleton, Mr McGrath said: “I was bored. I was broken.”
Unsettled, Mr. McGrath began looking for products he could wholesale and sell, and Mr. Olson, who studied business at a local technical school and worked at Best Buy, joined him as a co-founder.
Their first big purchase was 3,000 Belgian police balaclavas. They asked Mr Fritz, who had a camera and liked to take videos, to record them in Mr McGrath’s parents’ driveway.
They thought Americana Pipedream would be a “side business,” said Mr. Olson, who admitted he had little interest in surplus or military history at first. Mr. McGrath, meanwhile, has been uploading historical military images he found online to an Instagram account with more than 100,000 followers, which he started as a high school freshman.
“We leaned into it because it was next to the story and we could tell stories about the product we were selling,” he said.
And they had a bigger, intimate story they wanted to tell with their business.
“I think the core of it is just that even today, with all the different challenges that people face, especially in the wake of runaway inflation and Covid, you can still achieve things that are fantastic,” Mr McGrath said. “Be someone who can start something of their own and not have to work for someone else.”
Mr McGrath and his business partners take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the surplus they sell. While some shops emphasize the tactical abilities of their equipment, the founders of Americana Pipedream mainly fill their Instagram page with DIY graphics and riffs on viral memes in the style of Throwing Fits or Blackbird Spyplane.
In a meme, they suggest that a plastic vapor could replace ammo in the pouches of an equipment belt.
“I feel like they’re a great group of people to work with and hang out with, and that helps a customer,” said Brett Smith, a 27-year-old AV technology and food service worker in Charleston, W.Va. , who recently bought a German Flecktarn shirt from the store.
Americana Pipedream also doesn’t shy away from firearms. When modeling a new product, such as a blue US Navy jumpsuit, Mr McGrath can grab his personal plate carrier filled with magazines and a World War II replica British Sten submachine gun.
The young men of Americana Pipedream recently flew to Texas for a range day planned by two gun vloggers, Brandon Herrera, aka the AK Guy, and Cody Garrett, who is also the Donut Operator.
After a stop at home to move into their new warehouse, Mr. McGrath, Mr. Olson and Mr. Fritz then headed to the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show and the Army Navy Military Show, both at Las Vegas. They caught up with old friends and wholesalers, sourced products and attended some of the industry’s top events — including a Chernobyl-themed party hosted by Crye Precision, the tactical uniform and equipment manufacturer.
Many people drawn to Americana Pipedream gear will most likely be on the political right. “It’s military surplus,” Mr McGrath said. “You will take it”. But he and Mr. Olson said they did not want to be too closely associated with any political position and did not feel entirely at home at the gatherings.
“I think we definitely overpaid how long we wanted to be in Vegas,” Mr. Olson said, adding, “It’s not really my cup of tea.”
Hometown Heroes
Mr. Olson and Mr. McGrath would rather be in Appleton. Both love their hometown, pointing out landmarks like their local parish church (the same as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s) and recounting local lore. If he had more free time, Mr. McGrath said he would probably be camping along the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin or hunting waterfowl.
Americana Pipedream may soon get more hands to lighten the load. Mr McGrath said he planned to recruit more of his friends. He wants to run a business that isn’t “this draconian Amazon environment that makes everyone terribly unhappy and depressed,” he said.
He and Mr. Olson have created a quarterly bonus based on sales that they distribute to everyone in the company in a sort of profit-sharing scheme. They are considering adding other perks like a gym and sauna for their workplace.
Back at the warehouse, a new shipment of surplus had just arrived. A container of Austrian, Slovenian and Italian material had arrived in Appleton after a stop at an Italian port, a trip across the Atlantic and a truck ride from Chicago.
The warehouse does not yet have a road suitable for an eighteen-wheeler, but after some persuasion, the truck driver maneuvered the 40-foot container as close to the loading area as possible. But then the Americana Pipedream gang realized that no one had a bolt cutter to break the can’s metal seal. Mr. Olson was sent to a hardware store down the street.
With time to kill, the truck driver, a man in white Fila sneakers and black track pants, appeared to notice how young Mr. McGrath looked as the employees prepared to unload the truck.
“What are you guys doing here?” he asked and Mr. McGrath explained.
The truck driver nodded, still a bit confused.
“I like this stuff,” he said. “Everybody likes these things.”