Key Takeaways:  

• The three military exchange systems generate more than $11 billion a year combined, yet rarely factor into channel strategy.
• Beauty is growing faster than any other discretionary category on base, partly due to Amazon. 
• Stores in more than 30 countries let exchanges spot trends like K-beauty before the US market gains access. 

Why has a retail system in business since 1895, serving over 30 million eligible shoppers—roughly one in 11 Americans—mostly stayed out of the beauty conversation for 131 years? The short answer is that most brands can’t get past the front gate. 

Military exchanges are retail stores on military bases in the US and overseas, including Southwest Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Pacific, and shopping them is a benefit of service. They are open to active-duty members, retirees, veterans, Guard and Reserve members, Department of War civilians, and military families, and if you’re eligible to shop at one, you have access to all of them.

Three organizations run the military exchange system, each tied to a service branch: The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), which brands itself as the Exchange and operates The Post Exchange (PX) and The Base Exchange (BX) that serve as department stores on Air Force and Army bases; and the Navy and Marine Corps run their own, the Navy Exchange (NEX) and the Marine Corps Exchange (MCX), respectively. 

AAFES is the largest, with more than 5,500 facilities in over 30 countries, though only 118 of those are the PXs and BXs where beauty sits. In fiscal year 2025, The Exchange—the 51st-largest retailer in the US, according to the AAFES—generated $8.