Quick Facts:

AIR FORCE FIRST LOOKPROGRAM

Air Force spends ~$1.8B annually using GPC
Micro-purchase spend quadrupled in 15 years
Number of AF Small Business shrunk 20% in 4 years
COVID impacts are hitting small businesses harder

Introduction
The AF has followed suit with Federal Government
agencies in the amount of spend to small businesses.
While spend percentages have remained steady overall,
the number of discrete vendors receiving awards has
sharply declined. This trend started drawing attention inFY17, when the OMB Category Management (CM) programstarted. For this reason, some point to CM for this decline,
but there are no clear linkages to show this is driving thedecline. In fact, the Air Force CM program focused themajority of recommendations on reducing our cost percapability through non-acquisition solutions such as
demand management, policy, and adoption of industry
best practices. Many CM acquisition solutions increasesmall business participation. So what is driving this shift?

How we got here
Looking at the environment our local small businesses facecan help us understand how we lost some of our businessconnectivity with our local small businesses.
From the inception of the DoD Government-widepurchase card program (GPC) in 1989 to present, theprogram has grown significantly. The Air Force currently
spends approximately $1.8 Billion annually through 26
thousand cardholders across the globe. With the advent ofe-marketplace providers like Amazon, the ease in which
we can make purchases without traveling has shifted our
culture from going down town to on-line to make smallpurchases. This has yielded tremendous time-savings toour Airmen and a vital tool in Air Force units today.

Likewise, our security posture adjusted to the growing
threat of terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Base access diminished for contractors due to enhanced
security postures. This lack of access combined with ourAir Forces transient workforce, slowly eroded thosebusiness relationships and firsthand knowledge of mission
requirements. From that point on, access was by invitation
only - difficult when you do not know whom to invite.
The pace of operations in a post 9-11 environment
demanded acquisitions at the speed of relevance,
quadrupled the micro-purchase threshold over 15 years toassist mission partners meeting operational requirements.
Likewise, budgetary pressures like sequestration, growing
threats to our supply chains and other legislation caused
the Air Force and other Federal Agencies to increase efforts
to leverage spend, shift efforts to reduce duplicative
contracts and add oversight on who and how we contract
with to maximize mission per dollar spend.
Nationally, this environment has stifled startups. Fewerand larger companies are dominating the economy,
creating a sharp decline in the formation of newbusinesses.
COVID supply chain interruptions andshutdowns have only exacerbated the problem.
While none of these events intended to create barriers tosmall businesses doing business with the Air Force, viewed
in totality, it gives us a sense of why we lost some of theconnectivity with our local business partners.

Air Force’s Solution
SAF/AQCA has teamed with SAF/SB as well as industry
partners to preserve the responsiveness, convenience, andfamiliarity of e-commerce, demystifying how local unitscan ‘discover’ these surrounding small businesses whileenhancing data to produce strategic effects from adecentralized GPC model. This is the Air Force FIRST LOOK:
giving our local small businesses the “first look’ forcompeting for requirements.

The ProgramThis program does not require any additional authorities;
we have always had the authority. What Air Force FIRSTLOOK brings, is the ability to easily locate those vendors,
and is consistent with the intent of public policy such as theSmall Business Act. The intent of this program is to create
tools, not rules, to enable cardholders to buy from local
small businesses when it makes business sense, while
maintaining the ease and speed for fulfilling theirrequirements. This is not a mandatory program, butanother tool for local Commanders to achieve strategic
impacts through their local micro-purchase spend.
We envision this program helping identify local small
businesses quickly, providing better data to develop future
intentional strategies for local small businessdevelopment, more efficiently leveraging spend across theAF enterprise while still keeping small business set asides
and providing visibility of economic impacts to installations
to re-establish or strengthen community relationships.

AIR FORCE FIRST LOOK BenefitsHarness local business know how / knowledge / insightLocal Small Businesses reinvest 20% more revenue into
the local economy compared to national chain retailers
Increased employment opportunities for community(Including spouse / dependents)
More resilient local economies & investments that help
Insulate against economic downturns
Vendor base that understands base requirementsReplenishment of opportunities for a more robust small
Business industrial base
Better community / base connectivity

Industry Partner Participation
The Air Force has teamed with multiple industry partners
to help realize the vision of maintaining tactical execution,
ecommerce capabilities, and minimal cardholder effort
while changing the dynamics back to giving our local small
businesses an opportunity to compete for our business.
Amazon Business: This component enables cardholders toconveniently shop for items as they typically would athome, while ‘automagically’ finding any local small
business within 50 miles of any AF base if there is anoffering from the currently 107,000 local small businesses

that sell on Amazon Business. Buyers still enjoy Prime
benefits, automatic tax exclusion, and level X data to give
greater insight into spends patterns over time.
W.W. Grainger: This component enables local small
businesses to possess big business ecommerce capabilities
as a small business - at no cost to them! No enrollment
fees, pass through costs, nothing. This also gives thesebusinesses visibility across the AF enterprise. Registeredusers can discover AF small businesses across the CONUS.
AF FIRST LOOK is complementary to local Installation SmallBusiness efforts. There are multitudes of other ways inwhich installations can give local small businesses their
FIRST LOOK, including vendor days, local source lists anddecentralized vehicles for cardholders to purchase from.
Team with local Contracting Squadron and requirement
owns to host Reverse Vendor days; local CONS can assist toguide efforts to increase local businesses awareness ofbase mission needs and bases to discover new businesses
AAFES has teamed with ePS to build the National Diversity
Veteran Small Business (NDVSB) eMarketplace, which gives
you access to 15 million items (and growing) from VeteranOwned only from nationally certified suppliers based in theUSA. A portion of AAFES profits are given back to Services
to support MWR and Community activities.

Did you know?

Small businesses are responsible for inventing some ofour most common items we rely on today including:Aircraft
Air Conditioning Assembly lines
Cat scansComputers
Heart Valves
Hydraulic brakes Optical Scanner Soft Contact lensResults to dateThrough Amazon Business, the Air Force has purchased
7,600 buys from 2,600 NEW local small businesses: buying$5.8 million through normal eMarketplace shopping
without burdensome cardholder training. We haveeducated almost 1K vendors on AF buying processes. An
additional $1.29 million went to small businesses including
Woman-owned, Veteran-owned, 8(a), and HUB Zone
companies. Air Force FIRST LOOK is bridging gaps left fromthe 4 year/20% decline in awards to discrete small businessthe Air Force relies on to fly, fight, and win.

Learn More

AF Amazon Business Account – AF CH and A/OPCs only
W.W. Grainger – must register to AF Grainger account
NDVSB eMarketplace for AAFES - Training Video