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A La Jolla-based e-commerce company has put a new and apparently lucrative twist on the concept of providing discounts to military personnel - a longstanding tradition for many businesses.
GovX, formed in October 2011, touts itself as the nation's leading online destination for military and government discount shopping, reporting roughly 300,000 members and prominent clients such as the San Diego Padres and Major League Baseball. Through the company's patent-pending software, GovX.com verifies members as either active or retired military, and active or retired first responders who are eligible for discounts to some 140 premium brands of goods and services.
And while the site's membership is expanding by about 2,000 daily, the upside is much, much bigger, its founders said.
The U.S. population of active and former military, law enforcement, firefighters and emergency rescue people and their families is about 61 million, accounting for about $40 billion in e-commerce last year, said Tony Farwell, GovX's president and one of the company's three founders.
GovX is on track to generate about six times the revenue it did in 2012, although Farwell declined to provide...