Girl Scout Cookies

[Guest Chaney]

March 14, 2004

Crave Thin Mints? Girl Scout Cookies Available on eBay

By JULIA MOSKIN

The cookies are coming — or are they?

After a long winter of taking orders for cookies across the country, girls in the 2.9-million-member Girl Scouts organization have been delivering them this month. A similar frenzy of activity last year made the Scouts' leading seller, Thin Mints, the third-best-selling cookie in the United States, behind Oreos and Chips Ahoy.

For some Americans, though, the cookies are hard to find. Some areas of the country have higher concentrations of Girl Scouts than others, and the Girl Scout gap means that cookie availability is uneven.

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that they would show up on eBay, the online auction site.

Steven Mellor, a Bay Area software developer, bought 12 boxes of Thin Mints from a seller in Houston on Wednesday. "I missed the one day the Girl Scouts were at the hardware store in Oakland," he said. He added: "I would have bought them from a Girl Scout, if I had seen one. But I didn't."

Of course the market works both ways. A scarcity of the cookies is unimaginable to Laurie Super of Downingtown, Pa., who has delivered 80 boxes with her daughter, Taylor, 10. Not everyone who orders cookies takes them, Ms. Super, 38, said. Faced with a surplus — two boxes of Caramel deLites and one of Piñatas — she put them on eBay as a single lot, where they sold at a 66 percent profit. "We just couldn't eat any more cookies," Ms. Super said.

Auctioning cookies on eBay is not what the organization's leadership has in mind for Girl Scouts, who are supposed to learn social skills and confidence from the experience. "Everyone thinks about the cookies and the money," said Michele Riggio, a spokeswoman for the organization. "But cookies are an activity first and foremost."

Girl Scout policy prohibits online sales, Ms. Riggio said, and cookies are not for sale on the organization's Web site. But last week, hundreds of boxes were available on eBay. Most were cookies that sellers bought from local troops and paid for.

Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said: "As far as eBay is concerned, these cookies are private property. We are not going to ban people from reselling them." He added that employees in eBay's corporate offices in San Jose, Calif., were "up to their ears in cookies."

Girl Scout cookies are big business in the United States. Last year, more than 200 million boxes were sold, netting about $400 million. But by any business standard, the sales and distribution model for Girl Scout cookies seems wildly inefficient.

The Girl Scouts are divided into 315 regional councils. Every year, each council sets its own schedule and pricing and selling policies, and even the names of the cookies can vary. In Cincinnati this year, cookies were $2.50 a box, in Tucson, $4 a box, in New York City, $3.50. Girl Scouts have about a month to take orders, traditionally by selling door to door and in booths at local civic events.

"But it's getting harder to sell," said Ms. Super, who was a Girl Scout. "Girls can't go door to door without an adult these days. Our local Wawa stores said that they couldn't let the girls set up their booth anymore, because of liability issues. And the schools are already sending the kids out selling all the time."

Still, she said, she sees the need for the prohibition on Internet sales. If online sales were allowed, she said, there would be "a national free-for-all."

Many eBay sellers are Web-savvy parents who are determined to reach the national market for Girl Scout cookies, even if it means circumventing the organization's rules.

Carrie Nelson, who posted an auction sale for the cookies on eBay last Sunday, lives in Drummond, Wis., where, she said, "you can't throw a rock without hitting a Girl Scout." She has four daughters. The third, Anna, 8, is a member of Troop 45 of the Northern Pines Council. "There are just too many Girl Scouts per customer here," said Ms. Nelson, a software developer, who, like her husband, is disabled. "And it's not fair to my daughter that her parents can't take her out selling."

Ms. Nelson said Anna came up with the idea of selling on eBay. Ms. Nelson searched the Girl Scout literature for a loophole in the no-online-sales policy. Her solution was to auction, for 50 cents each, unofficial order forms for the cookies.

Lou Berger of Centennial, Colo., has already sold 113 boxes on eBay this month; his daughter Emily, 8, is a Girl Scout.

"It started with 14 boxes that I bought and paid for, but wasn't going to eat," he said. "I figured I could resell them and give the profits to Emily's troop as a donation."

Individual scouts do not keep any money from the sales; nor does the national organization. Once the baker is paid, the troop earns about 50 cents on each box, and the rest is kept by the council.

Mr. Berger says he is frustrated by the slow earnings rate of the cookies, especially compared with the rate for popcorn and peanuts that his son's Boy Scout troop sells each year. "The Boy Scouts here keep 35 percent of the purchase price," he said. "The Girl Scouts keep only 17 percent. So what are they teaching the girls — that it's O.K. to work just as hard and make less money?"

The Girl Scouts, one of the largest all-female organizations in the United States, have often been drafted into the culture wars. This year, Girl Scout cookies are the battleground. In February, a Texas anti-abortion group staged a boycott of cookies after the Girl Scout logo appeared on posters for a sex education seminar held by Planned Parenthood. The Bluebonnet Council of Central Texas lost two troops after parents in Crawford pulled their daughters out of scouting, said its executive director, Beth Vivio.

But as the thriving Internet trade in cookies suggests, the cult of the cookies will not be easily uprooted.

Ms. Super says that when her lot of three boxes sold for $15 last Tuesday evening, she began to suffer seller's remorse. When she also received a stern e-mail message from an anonymous troop leader, warning her that the national leadership frowned on Internet transactions, she contacted the buyer and returned the money.

"I felt that I wouldn't be able to look my daughter in the eye," Ms. Super said, "and that next year, she would be able to say: `Mom, I don't feel like going door to door. Let's just sell them all on eBay.' "

[Soulstation1]

FWIW

DO NOT eat a half of box of thin mint cookies before bed.....

Edited March 12, 2007 by Soulstation1

[JSngry]

This is the first year I can remember that we have not been solicited for cookie sales at home, work, or anywhere. Didn't realize they were out until we saw the girls seeling them form tables at the grocerie stores, etc.

WTF?

[chris olivarez]

Thin mints. Must have thin mints. Forget jazz-must have thin mints-must have

[Soulstation1]

Cute Overload