A Business With No Borders

As snow fell and ice glazed over the Midlands over Christmas, Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeffery Wharton juggled roles as a military intelligence officer and a small business owner running his venture from half a world away.

Stationed in Baghdad, Iraq, the Nebraska native owns and operates Fullstock.net, an Internet-based electronics store that logged its first sale in September 2008. Fullstock.net sells about 16,000 products, including high-performance headphones, cell phone batteries and power tools.

Wharton, a 10-year Air Force veteran, said in a phone interview from Iraq that he started Fullstock.net as a business he could operate remotely from any location.

“I wanted to create something that could supplement our income,” said Wharton, 31.

His wife, Shirley, and three sons live at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, where Wharton will be assigned after he returns from Baghdad in August.

“If the military takes me here or there, how’s that going to impact my survivability? With the Internet, it doesn’t really matter because I can do this anywhere,” Wharton said.

Without the power of the Internet, Fullstock.net wouldn’t have existed.

Wharton, who said he was a “gadget addict” as a kid, learned how to develop Web sites and run an online business by doing research on Google, the popular Internet search engine. Wharton even learned how to write Web coding — hypertext markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) — so he could design Fullstock.net himself.

“I kind of had to learn along the way,” he said. “Fortunately, I had some experience as a computer science major at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. I don’t think I could have done it without Google.”

In the past few weeks, Wharton said, he revamped Fullstock.net to prepare it for the holiday shopping season and beyond. The Web site now has a “cleaner and uncluttered” look, he said.

Wharton also made internal changes, including adding real-time inventory automation that allows for faster order processing and site updates. This provides the flexibility to leave the business on auto-pilot when Wharton’s military responsibilities increase, he said.

Wharton said there’s little downside risk to Fullstock.net.

“If I don’t sell anything during the month, there’s no skin off my back. (Fullstock.net) is set up to the point where I can just pull the plug if it doesn’t work.”

Wharton also added Google checkout to the Web page, so customers have the option of paying either through Google or PayPal, an online payment processor. Offering flexible payment options is key, because online shoppers are always concerned about the safety and security of their financial information, he said.

Fullstock.net sales have doubled since Black Friday, Wharton said. Before the holiday shopping spike, sales for 2009 were up about 120 percent from 2008, he said.

He declined to give specific financial figures.

The holiday figures aren’t surprising. According to a U.S. Commerce Department report, electronics sales were up nationwide for November, and payment processor First Data, which has major operations in Omaha, said Wednesday that total debit, credit, check and gift card transactions for Dec. 1 through Dec. 14 grew 7.9 percent year over year.

Wharton might be stationed in a war zone, but he is attuned to consumer trends.

To appeal to holiday shoppers looking for the best deals, he dropped many prices to compete with other online electronics stores. The lower price tags mean smaller profit margins, but they also draw a higher volume of customers from shopping search engines such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing, which help consumers see products and prices, Wharton said.

Asked what would happen to the business if Wharton were faced with an extended military mission, he said duty comes first.

“If it came down to the business or my mission, obviously I would have to temporarily shut down,” he said.

On an average day, after concluding his duties for the Air Force, Wharton logs onto his personal laptop for anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours to service customer requests and to maintain the Web site.

Wharton said his military experience carries through to his business venture, where he has applied Air Force lessons and principles. And he proudly posts a banner at Fullstock.net reading “Veteran Owned Business” in red, white and blue.

However, few customers probably realize the company is operated by someone residing in a war zone.

“There is Internet access here, but the challenge is placing the orders in a timely manner, since most customers don’t realize who they are actually doing business with,” Wharton wrote in an e-mail. “For the most part I have managed through all pre-deployment training to keep the site up and running 100 percent with minor delays in orders or none at all.”

When Wharton returns home to begin his stint at Offutt, Fullstock.net operations probably won’t change, mostly because Wharton is its only employee and the only tools he needs are a laptop computer and an Internet connection.

“I’m kind of a one-man army, if you will, on this thing,” he said.

What will change with Wharton’s return to the Midlands is the longtime Husker fan’s ability to follow his team on the gridiron, and the ability to be with his family, he said.

Contact the writer:

444-1414, ross.boettcher@owh.com