In the past five years, the store has seen a steady decline in sales as troop levels have fallen, and it estimates that profits could tumble by two-thirds by 2017, to $100m. Now, as the U.S. winds down combat operations in Afghanistan, the Exchange is trying to reinvent itself for customers based at home. In 2012 it hired Tom Shull, its first civilian chief executive officer, a West Point graduate who led the luxury department store Barneys out of bankruptcy in 1999. He went on to run catalog company Hanover Direct and potato-chip maker Wise Foods before serving as the court-appointed chief restructuring officer for Fred Leighton, the upscale jeweler, during its 2009 bankruptcy proceedings.

Can he turn things around at the PX?

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