Samoas, Thin Mints: Girl Scout cookie sales go digital
Whether your favorites are Samoas or Thin Mints, cookie season just got easier for customers with new technology.
The Girl Scouts of the USA are going digital to sell their famous goodies after almost 100 years of traditional in-person transactions.
The new program, called Digital Cookie, allows Scouts to take orders via e-mail. For the Web version, customers can visit a scout's personal cookie Web page that tracks cookie sales, days remaining and percentage of goal reached. Parents must approve the content of the page, according to the Scouts.
"It allows you to reach customers that you would not reach otherwise," says Lauren Tinglin, 15, of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. She can start selling Dec. 12. Tinglin has family in Georgia and Florida that she plans to reach out to digitally this year.
The girls learn about e-mail marketing, finance and online communication through the program.
"I think it helps me organize my life in a way. It has you set goals," Tinglin said. "I think it will help me grow as a person and a future businesswoman."
The mobile app, used in some areas, allows credit card processing and direct shipping.
Kaeleigh Sturgeon,15, of the Girl Scouts of Central and Southern New Jersey, says the best part of the mobile app is its portability.
"Before, when we would keep track of our sales, we usually would use an Excel spreadsheet on the computer, but I carry my phone with me all the time and it is a lot easier to pull something up on my phone than go home and pull up a spreadsheet on my computer," Sturgeon says.
She may be tempted to sell some boxes during lunch at school when her sales start, since she is hoping to reach the 10,000-box mark over the span of her long Girl Scout career.
But the old-fashioned ways of doing business with door-to-door sales and girls stationed outside retail stores aren't history. Digital just adds a "new layer," says Kelly Parisi, chief communications executive of GSUSA.
"We are girl-led and girl-driven. We go where girls are, and girls are digital natives," Parisi says. "The digital component will enhance the sales, and the byproduct will be a larger social imprint from the girls."
All the net revenue from cookie sales stay with the Scout council that sponsors the sale. Girls decide how to spend their troop cookie money and reinvest it in their communities.
The majority of the 112 Girl Scout councils across the USA are testing the program during this cookie season. More councils are expected to be on board by the end of 2015, according to the Girl Scouts.
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