Military surplus gets a makeover for Gen Z

On a cold February afternoon, Logan McGrath and Mack Fritz were preparing to shoot a video advertising the green Austrian Army fatigue shirts they were selling on Americana Pipedream Apparel, Mr. McGrath's online military surplus store, started in his parents' basement in Appleton, Wisconsin, three years ago.

After outgrowing their last two locations and attracting the attention of clients like singer Post Malone, they had recently moved to a new location: a former furniture showroom converted into a 24,000 warehouse square feet. The large space was already filling up. Afghan war rugs were piled in a corner. Large laundry bins contained hundreds of American military canteens as well as current British uniforms and camouflage equipment. Boxes of energy drinks were stacked near the refrigerator.

More than a dozen employees, most of them in their twenties and friends of M . McGrath from high school, crisscrossed space on scooters, Segways and skateboards. They collected Greek camouflage jackets, West German military patches, and packages of vanilla pound cake from U.S. military rations, assembling them for orders. In the back of the warehouse, they sorted pallets of surplus that had arrived from as far away as Indonesia and Pakistan, including about 1,500 grayish-green Austrian KAZ-75 military shirts.

Nearby, Mr. McGrath and Mr. Fritz, both 21, worked on a video to market the shirts on their popular Instagram page. The two young men gathered around a folding table in Mr. Fritz's office, the furniture company's former paint shop, and scrolled through the script they were editing.

“Have you ever seen the Austrian drip going so strong? Mr. Fritz, wearing an orange down jacket, proposed.

ImageA Americana Pipedream employee sorts through piles of military jackets. Credit...Sara Stathas for the New York Times