Plastic Surgery in Grapevine, TX

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AFNS) --

Gen. John D. Lamontagne,Air Mobility Command commander, revealed his commander’s intent and celebrated a banner year of mobility operations during his keynote address at the 56th Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium in Grapevine, Texas, Oct. 31.

In his address to more than 1,000 current and former Airmen, community leaders, industry representatives and civilians, Lamontagne bucketed his intent in three focus areas: Airmen, Mission and Commitment.

He outlined four to five sub-categories under each area. For Airmen, he intends to ensure mission ready Airmen, who are accountable for themselves and one another. He also expects a command focused on empowering leadership at the lowest echelons while continuing to strengthen Airman and family resilience.

“It starts and ends with the Airmen; Mission Ready Airmen that are ready to thrive and operate in some austere environments in an agile combat employment [manner],” he said. “Even if you’re disconnected from your leadership, you’re going to know what needs to be done and you’re going to execute.”

In his discussion of mission, Lamontagne reaffirmed the nuclear mission remains the command’s most consequential. He also spoke about the command’s work to digitally connect the force, which will help ensure the command’s ability to mitigate emerging threats and fully integrate command and control, not just with U.S. Transportation Command, but also with the 618th Air Operations Center’s counterparts in Europe and the Pacific. Another continued focus is working with the newly erected Integrated Capabilities Command (Provisional) to strengthen the Air Force’s aging tanker fleet while simultaneously accelerating future tanker capability.

“Team, our Air Force senior leadership sees what we see... the need to modernize the fleet and connect digitally which will help us mitigate threats and perform integrated command and control,” Lamontagne said.

The final focus area was on the command’s commitment.

“Commitment is analogous to our chief of staff of the United States Air Force’s efforts to follow through,” Lamontagne said. “And we are going to be committed to the changes our Air Force is making and the priorities of our combatant command.”

Specifically, Lamontagne emphasized the command’s commitment to our higher headquarters’ priorities, our creation of strong combat and air base wings, our future capabilities and our Air Force, joint, allied and partner teammates.

Lamontagne also celebrated another incredible year for AMC and mobility forces, which included support to several pivotal operations across all geographic combatant commands. He congratulated Airmen for their continued focus on improving readiness forGreat Power Competition and potential peer conflict, including max endurance operations and participating in service and joint-level exercises like Bamboo Eagle.

“Not unlike years that came before it, and probably not unlike years that’ll come after it,” Lamontagne said. “As we contribute to a mission that is bigger than ourselves and helping our nation achieve its most strategic objectives.”

Finally, Lamontagne previewed the work ahead. The command plans to do a clean-sheet review of the approach to the aeromedical evacuation and global air mobility support system missions, prioritizing effectiveness in contested environments rather than efficiency, which was ideal for the counter-VEO mission. The command has moved out on its creation of its combat wings and air base wings, also reviewing its current numbered air force structures. Lamontagne highlighted the next evolution of Mobility Guardian scheduled for the summer of 2025 in the Pacific.

“In 2023, this command turned heads, changed the game and got everyone’s attention,” Lamontagne said. “It proved we could do exercises at speed, at scale and at distance. No more pixie dust on the logistics. In 2025, it’s going to be bigger still. It’ll be a joint exercise with U.S. Transportation Command Exercise Ultimate Distribution and part of it is going to become an Air Force, service-level exercise.”

Throughout his keynote address, Lamontagne focused on addressing the Airmen and outlining his intent to make sure his message is clear for the command’s road ahead.

“Whether you know it or not, we are standing on the shoulders of giants that have provided an asymmetric advantage for our nation,” Lamontagne said. “That asymmetric advantage is you—rapid global mobility—and we’ve been doing it for eight decades.”

Sam’s Club reopened in Grapevine on Thursday, nearly two years after a powerful tornado destroyed the membership warehouse. But this new store, rebuilt at the same location, is nothing like Sam’s shoppers have seen before.

The Grapevine Sam’s Club is the company’s first all-digital store — meaning, for one thing, there are no traditional cash registers. The head of the division of Walmart is describing the format as “what the future should look like for Sam’s Club.”

“You’re going to walk into this club and it’s a fully digital experience,” Chris Nicholas, CEO and president of Sam’s Club, said in an Oct. 7 video interview with Omni Shop Retail. “The first thing you’re going to notice on your left-hand side is there are no registers. We expect 100% digital engagement in that club, which means everyone is shopping Scan & Go.”

Customers of the store at 1701 W. Texas 114 will use the Sam’s Club app while in the store to find and pay for their items. But that doesn’t mean the store won’t have employees. Nicholas said workers will be on hand to help shoppers who are less digitally savvy. “We are going to help them get on that journey,” he said.

When guests exit the store, “computer vision receipt” arches will check a shopper’s cart against their online receipt. This eliminates the checkout line.

The Grapevine location now features a pizza-making robot that can produce 100 pies an hour. The location will also have a “reimagined cafe,” sushi bar and in-house tortilla machine.

After the tornado outbreak in December 2022, which injured at least five people in Grapevine, Sam’s Club said it planned to permanently close the Grapevine location that had been there since 2003. “This decision aligns with the long-term growth strategy for our company,” a representative said at the time.

But a year later, Sam’s Club announced it had changed its mind.

“The Grapevine community reached out to us, sharing the many ways they love Sam’s Club and how we’ve served their small businesses, schools, sports clubs, nonprofit organizations and more,” Walmart said in a statement.

The new store will be different in other ways, too. Without the cash registers, there’s more room for online pickup and fulfillment. Nicholas told Omni Shop Retail that a local artist painted a large mural near the entrance.

The store will maximize what the industry calls a frictionless experience for customers, which Nicholas says customers want. And, he said, members who are “digitally engaged” by using the app and other tools spend three times more than members who don’t.

Thursday’s grand opening celebrations start at 8 a.m. Events continue through Sunday with “free family fun, giveaways, food, & more while supplies last.”

As part of the grand opening, Sam’s Club will give $30,000 through a grant and in-kind charitable donations to support the Grapevine Relief and Community Exchange (GRACE).

The new store is open at 1701 W. Texas 114 in Grapevine. See below for more hours of operation:

Service Team reporter Ella Gonzales contributed to this report.

This story was originally published October 16, 2024, 11:22 AM.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the Sam’s Club operating hours. The store is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Nancy Doughney has become one of the best stained glass artists around. Instead of raking in a profit, she uses her skills to help others.

More Videos

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Twenty years ago, Nancy Doughney was sitting there watching one of those do-it-yourself shows when she got the urge to do it herself.

“I watched them make a wind chime out of glass and I thought I want to try that,” she said.

Thus began Nancy’s obsession with stained glass. Today, she’s nearly run out of room to display her creations. Her backyard is a stained glass gallery, featuring a horse, a giraffe and roughly a dozen other pieces.

Eventually, her husband, John, started doing it too. Now, virtually every night until midnight the two retired educators are in the studio creating art.

“But Nancy’s development of this now has gone to another level,” John said.

Nancy is now, arguably, one of the most talented stained glass artists anywhere. She creates realistic mosaics that, from a distance, look like detailed paintings, yet they are all made with glass.

Credit: WFAA

Her pieces have been displayed and showcased around the world in places like Times Square and Europe. Not surprisingly, she gets a lot of requests from galleries that want to display her art and people who want to buy it. So, Nancy and John turned it into a business, albeit, not a very good one.

They rarely make a profit, often doing work for free or charging only for materials. They've donated a lot of their time and talent to creating stained glass art for charities.

“No, our business model is not one we would put out there for anyone to adopt,” John said.

A lot of their art is also personal like the stained glass Samantha King brought to them a couple of years back.

“She came in and I remember her coming in crying, just in tears,” John said. “And we said, ‘Tell us how we can help you.’”

“There were a lot of tears shed that day,” said King.

After her grandma’s death, King inherited a piece of her stained glass, which always caught her eye when she visited her grandma in San Angelo.

“It felt like I had a piece of her house with me and that was a piece of her,” King said.

But after a bumpy drive home, the glass pane was in pieces. She couldn’t afford the nearly $3,000 it would cost to have it fixed.

Eventually, she found John and Nancy, who put the pieces back together.

“They’re miracle workers,” King said.

John and Nancy fixed up the pane and even used the broken glass to make two angel ornaments that King can hang on her Christmas tree.

Credit: WFAA

“I was just overwhelmed with emotions,” King said. “I’ll always be thankful for them.”

“It reinforced why we do it,” John said. “If it brings joy to somebody else, then why not do it.”

As John and Nancy have discovered, given the chance to do something kind, it’s always rewarding to do it yourself.

Sam’s Club has long been one of the most innovative retailers in America. However, since its new CEO Chris Nicholas took over the helm last year, that moniker is now coming into question.

Because the phrase “one of” is a disservice.

Sam’s Club isn’t one of the most innovative retailers. It may now just be the single most innovative retailer out there.

Case in point: the new store it plans to open in Grapevine, Texas later this month.

According to a recent interview with Nicholas at Groceryshop (see above), Sam’s Club plans to open a new store that will have . . . wait for it . . . no checkout lanes.

There’s innovation. And then there’s innovation.

This is innovation.

It’s bold. It’s unprecedented. And it’s an idea that shows that Sam’s Club is unafraid to fail.

Checklanes? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Checklanes

According to Nicholas, the new store is part of Sam’s Club’s broader strategy to “pioneer the future of retail,” i.e. to create a store that is a physical manifestation of the company’s vision for a fully digital engagement across its operations, and here is how it works.

The new store replaces traditional checkout lanes with a digital-first shopping experience where customers use Sam’s Club’s popular Scan & Go smartphone app to make purchases as they shop (an app that remarkably 30% of Sam’s Club shoppers already use chainwide). When customers finish shopping they can then simply exit the store via computer vision-based archways (see photo below) that cross-check their carts against their digital receipts, thereby enabling them to avoid lines altogether.

Will the idea work?

Maybe. Maybe not. But that is not the point.

More Than Just A Store – It’s A Laboratory For Learning

The point is that the store is a testing ground to understand the puts and takes of omnichannel warehouse club retailing.

For example, Nicholas mentioned that the absence of traditional checkouts allows Sam’s Club to reimagine its floor space. The area typically occupied by cash registers instead will showcase online-only items, ranging from towering Christmas trees to dazzling lab-grown diamonds, all of which allows customers to interact with products they might otherwise only see on a screen.

The new store design also plans to allocate more space for the preparation of online orders. Store workers will have approximately four times the area to assemble orders for curbside pickup and home delivery, reflecting the company’s commitment to evolving with consumers’ increasing proclivities to shop via e-commerce.

But perhaps, most importantly, the store helps Nicholas and his team understand “friction,” a word Nicholas used over and over again in the interview. By walking out on the thin branch of innovation without a net, Sam’s Club will get a better understanding of what trade-offs customers are willing to make in exchange for a more convenient, time-saving, and easy shopping experience.

If 30% of Sam’s Club shoppers already use Scan & Go regularly, is it a bridge too far to force everyone who visits one particular store to shop that way? Or does it risk alienating the 70% of shoppers who don’t use Scan & Go?

Sam’s Club will never know the answer to these questions unless it tries.

Rest Assured, This Isn’t Sam’s Club’s First Innovation Rodeo

It very well could be quite alarming to Grapevine shoppers as they enter the store for the first time, but, newsflash, Sam’s Club has already run this experiment, too. It knows the downside risk of this approach from its first concept store, Sam’s Club Now, which opened back in 2018 and also required all shoppers to shop via its Scan & Go app.

And, yet, for some odd reason, the sky never fell with Sam’s Club Now, and instead, Sam’s Club Now helped Sam’s Club learn how to perfect its Scan & Go app and how to deploy computer vision technology to improve the experience for both its employees and its shoppers. None of this would have happened had Sam’s Club not been willing to take a similar bold chance six years ago.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it Chicken Little.

As revolutionary as a checkout-free warehouse club experience may sound, what Sam’s Club plans to unveil later this month is, in reality, far more evolution than revolution, and that’s the beauty of it.

It’s Design Thinking At Its Finest

Nicholas and Sam’s Club are designing for the Sam’s Club experience not for tomorrow but for 10 or 15 years down the road. They are designing for a future in which shoppers are more tech-savvy than they are today and one in which Gen Z and Millennials hold even more spending power.

Or said another way, it is concept store work at its finest.

Sam’s Club is taking the risk of opening a single store that could fail for the option value of learning about what disrupting itself could look like at a time when so many other retailers are busy burying their heads in the sand and are just happy doing things incrementally better with each passing day. Through successive concept stores — first Sam’s Club Now and then this new Grapevine store — Sam’s Club’s realization of its store of the future is much more in focus than it is at other retailers, and particularly compared to its biggest rival, Costco.

There’s clearly something in the water at Sam’s Club and the rest of the retail industry would be wise to say to itself, “I’ll have what Sam’s is having.”