American E-tailers Miss Huge Market by Not Shipping to APO/FPOs

With well over 200,000 U.S. military service members and diplomats serving abroad, the U.S. Post Office has a special way of shipping mail to our troops and diplomats. Mail sent to a U.S. duty station overseas travels just like any mail would throughout the U.S. The system dates back to before WWII. Though mail to U.S. personnel serving overseas is seamless using the U.S. Post Office, greedy e-tailers and technology make it difficult to order merchandise online and get it to our men and women serving around the world.

 

A first class letter costs the same for me to send from my home town to my son in Iraq as it does to send across the street. The Post office has army post offices (APOs) and fleet post offices (FPOs) that serve the world’s American military and diplomatic duty stations.

 

But many E-tailers are not set up to serve our troops and they are missing out on a huge market, not to mention disappointing online shoppers.

 

Consider the demographics of today’s deployed military personnel. Most are members of the X and Y generations and nearly everyone posted overseas has a laptop or access to a computer. Many duty stations provide high speed Internet.

 

My son is two months into his second tour in Iraq and his computer is his lifeline. He chats on Yahoo messenger and uses Skype for calls. Ironically, both Yahoo voice and Skype provide better connections than if he uses a public telephone and calling card. When overseas troops are not on duty they are often using the Internet to chat with friends and family or browse websites. They would purchase merchandise and have it delivered to them if it were easy to do so. Regrettably, most e-tailers are not set up so that a service member can order a product and have it shipped to their overseas duty station. Even the lowest level military personnel has money to spend because nearly 100% of their expenses are paid for, they receive a special pay if they are in a combat zone, and the small local PX (often a large tent) which carry limited goods is the only place to spend money.

 

Recently www.walmart.com was singled out as a “military unfriendly” e-tailer when it was disclosed that Wal-Mart charges overseas military personnel nearly five times as much for shipping as U.S. bound packages. The irony is the U.S. Post Office doesn’t charge more for shipping to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than to Peoria Ill. When Wal-Mart ships to an APO or FPO address, their package is really going to a mail center on the East or West Coast of the U.S. Military contractors takes it from there to foreign duty stations.

 

About a month ago, my son in Iraq wrote an email asking me to find and buy a Dell power adaptor for his six month old Dell laptop. I found it on www.amazon.com, ordered it the day I received my son’s email, paid regular first class shipping for the product and was given the specific date my son should expect the package in Iraq. Amazon appeared to charge me the same thing that they would have charged me if they were shipping directly to me. My son received the power adaptor, one day before the 10 days Amazon estimated it would arrive. Amazon clearly wants to serve the large number military and diplomatic personnel overseas.

 

Smaller online merchants have other problems serving overseas personnel. Often off the shelf shopping cart software used to operate a web store doesn’t allow the proper input of APO and FPO addresses. I don’t think it would take much more to make their software work for overseas shipping, but many software companies that provide shopping carts to merchants simply overlook this market.

 

According to several sources including Shopping Cart Reviews, Pinnacle Cart is one of the most popular shopping cart systems in use by small and mid-sized businesses. According to user reviews, its software is above average in meeting most e-tailer’s needs. According to Craig Fox, Founder and V.P of Product Development for Pinnacle, “Pinnacle Cart provides its merchants with the flexibility to ship to U.S. overseas personnel by making minor adjustment in the administration area of the application.” Fox walked me through the steps on an online demo of his shopping cart and it took less than 30 seconds to set-up the cart to accept APO/FPO addresses. Fox said his product doesn’t come pre-configured for this feature because not all merchants use the U.S. Post office for shipping. Shipping via the U.S. Post Office is required to get packages to overseas duty stations.

 

Merchants that have online stores should consider their policies about shipping to U.S. overseas personnel, and if their shopping cart system doesn’t support it, they should have a heart to heart discussion with that shopping cart vendor. There is a huge market ready to tap and it benefits our men and women serving overseas.

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Sam Thacker is a partner in Austin Texas based Business Finance Solutions.

You may contact Sam directly at: sam@lesliethacker.com

or follow him on Twitter: SMBfinance

 

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