Thin Mints are now just a click away! Girl Scouts will begin selling cookies online for the first time ever
- More than one million scouts are expected to start using a mobile app and personalized websites to sell cookies later this month
- Digital sales are intended to enhance, not replace, the paper spreadsheets Girl Scouts have traditionally used
By Associated Press and MailOnline Reporter
Published: 08:35 EST, 1 December 2014 | Updated: 10:13 EST, 1 December 2014
View
comments
Watch out world, the Girl Scouts are going digital to sell you cookies.
For the first time in nearly 100 years, Girl Scouts of the USA will allow its young go-getters to push their wares using a mobile app or personalized websites - but only if their scout councils and guardians say OK.
'Girls have been telling us that they want to go into this space,' said Sarah Angel-Johnson, chief digital cookie executive for the organization covering about two million girls. 'Online is where entrepreneurship is going.'

Going digital: Girl Scouts Bria (left) and Shirell (right) practice selling cookies on a tablet now that the organization has allowed online sales
And the best news for these digital natives: They can have cookies shipped directly to your doorstep.
More than one million scouts, from kindergarten-age Daisies to teens, were expected to opt in as cookie-selling season cranks up this month and the scouting organization gets digital sales underway. But digital sales are intended to enhance, not replace, the paper spreadsheets used to generate an estimated $800 million in cookie sales a year - at anywhere from $3.50 to $5 a box, depending on scout council.
There are important e-lessons here, scout officials said, such as better articulating and tracking goals, learning to handle customers and money in a new way, and more efficiently processing credit card information.
'A lot of people have asked, "What took you so long to get online?" We spend a lot of time thinking how do we make this safe, scalable and smart,' Kelly M. Parisi, chief communications executive for Girl Scouts of the USA, said at a recent demonstration for select media.
Councils were offered one of the two platforms but not both. For web-based sales, scouts customize their pages, using their first names only, and email prospective customers with links to click on for orders. They can also put up videos explaining who they are and what they plan to do with their proceeds.
The mobile platform offers tabs for tracking sales and allows for the sale of bundles of different kinds of cookies. It can be used on a phone or tablet.

Screen time: Girl Scouts are seen learning how to sell cookies on the organization's website using laptops
'They can get them quicker than waiting for me to deliver them because sometimes it takes me a long time to deliver,' offered 11-year-old Priscilla at the preview. The adults at the event asked that only first names of scouts be used.
Added seven-year-old Anna: 'My favorite part is that now I can sell more Girl Scout Cookies.' She pulled down about 200 boxes last year and has upped her goal to 600. Girl Scouts use their cookie money to pay for community service work or troop activities such as camping and other trips.
The websites will not be accessible without an email invitation, requiring the girls to build client lists. And personal information is as protected as any digits out there, for both the scouts and customers, using encryption in some cases.
Much of the responsibility to limit identifying details about scouts online falls on parents.
Troop Leader Karen Porcher of the Bronx has an 11-year-old scout and is particularly psyched about the digital options. They live in a house rather than an apartment, and she and her husband work at home, eliminating at-office cookie and neighborly building sales.

Sweet news: Customers can now have Thin Mints (pictured) and other Girl Scout cookies shipped directly to their doorstep
'During cookie season my daughter is wearing her (scout) vest on the subway and people are so excited to see a Girl Scout,' Ms Porcher explained. 'Strangers actually will buy a case of cookies and wait for her to call. This is going to be amazing because now she can just say "Give me your business card," or "I'll take your email address," send the email and they can be delivered. This is gonna be sweet.'
Ms Porcher also sees word-of-mouth value in getting cookies delivered quickly.
'People are going to be walking around with cookies and others are going to say, "Whoa, how did you get those already?"'
Zack Bennett of Manhattan has a nine-year-old scout who sold more than 1,000 boxes last year. She hopes to increase her goal to 1,500 this season and went through training to learn how to set up her new cookie website.
But dad won't be letting her loose alone.
'I'll be sitting in the backseat to help her, certainly when it comes to credit cards, things of that sort,' he said. 'But it makes perfect sense to have it be on the computer. It's definitely time the Girl Scouts came into the 21st century.'
MOST WATCHED NEWS VIDEOS
MOST READ NEWS
Colorado News
Get the latest Colorado news, sports, weather, entertainment, business & political news and more from Colorado Newsday.
Rate this article
New York teen made $72M trading stocks on his lunch breaks
Mohammed Islam, 17, started dabbling in penny stocks at the age of nineHe trades stocks on lunch breaks at New York's Stuyvesant High SchoolHas made ...
- Cardboard cutouts of black LYNCHING victims linked to Eric Garner protests found hanging on campus at Berkeley
- Sony hackers dump SEVENTH cache of files, threatening to disclose even more damaging secrets about embattled entertainment giant
- Drunk tractor driver decapitates three people in head-on crash
- Kim Kardashian denied access to Vanity Fair party
- Returning soldier told he can't stay with wife and newborn in her apartment because landlord claims lease says 'no visitors for longer than a week'
- Knee injury to sideline Broncos linebacker Danny Trevathan 6-8 weeks
- ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas 'being helped through' recovery from alcohol addiction and impending divorce by former colleague
- Spoiled teen takes parents to court
- Former director of Breckenridge Film Festival Dawna Foxx given 5 years for embezzling $300K
- Forbes rich list names world’s youngest billionaires
- Mother lulls her one-year-old daughter to sleep by singing beautiful rendition of Whitney Houston as the child lays in her arms
- Denver Man Michael McGinley threatened to kill wife in phone call at DA’s office
- Russian troops threaten to shoot Ukrainian soldiers in tense stand-off
- Pregnant woman drives kids into ocean in Florida
- Oprah Winfrey tells Lindsay Lohan to ‘cut the bull****’ in trailer for new reality show Lindsay
- Couple stole little girl's iPod in Aurora
- Petra Nemcova: 'The tsunami taught me to follow my heart'
- British troops are banned from shouting at insurgent terror suspects in soft-touch new rules for interrogation
- Michael Schumacher 'dumped by £4million a year sponsors after ski accident left him paralysed and unable to speak'
- Abused flight attendant who was ordered to turn Korean Air flight around and deboard after failing to serve spoiled chairman's daughter nuts in a bowl reveals airline officials asked him to lie about incident
- Amy Pascal calls Leonardo DiCaprio 'despicable' while fellow Sony executive trashes Jaden and Willow Smith in new emails
- UCLA Professor forced to apologize after 'racially insensitive and divisive' exam question he set about Ferguson shooting sparked outrage
- 'There is no "I" in torture': SNL takes aim at the Senate report into the CIA during interview with the 'psychologists' reportedly paid $80million to head up the program
- Drugged, sexually abused and tampled on by prisons guards for THREE MONTHS at a time: Guantanamo inmate still in captivity describes his ordeal in harrowing detail
- Bill Cosby praises wife's 'love and strength' as she sticks with him despite dozens of women accusing him of raping them
- Police admit they have NO idea who burned Mississippi teen Jessica Chambers alive as tearful friends gather to remember her at funeral
- Man, 22, arrested in connection with Portland high school shooting as police reveal he has gang ties
- Castleton's Hidden Tea Rooms owner branded by TripAdvisor users as the 'worst on Earth'
- Drugged, sexually abused and trampled on by prisons guards for THREE MONTHS at a time: Guantanamo inmate still in captivity describes his ordeal in harrowing detail
- School 'bribes' kids with bikes and iPods to make them eat Michelle O. lunches
- Older people should use social media to prevent decline in health, study finds
- Illinois teen accidentally shoots himself dead while chatting with a friend on FaceTime the day before his 16th birthday
- Families of Newtown victims to file lawsuit on anniversary of Sandy Hook shooting
- Spilling blood for their faith: Hundreds of Pakistani mourners flagellate themselves to mark death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson
- Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams paid less than male American Hustle co-stars
- Florida woman gives birth to conjoined twin sons connected at the abdomen
- Colorado Newsday Privacy Policy
- Boxer vows to fight on – after 51st defeat in row
- Marine biologist's stunning photographs show encounters with bizarre sea creatures
- 'Layaway Angel' pays customers' bills at toy store
- Kourtney Kardashian has baby boy, third child with Scott Disick
- Baby Achilles is found safe in Mexico after fugitive father abandoned him
- Dick Cheney remains unrepentant over CIA's torture program
- Taylor Zimmers in critical condition in Oregon high school shooting pictured
- Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones put their Majorcan villa up for sale
- Hot ride: MLB star spends $100K customizing his new Lamborghini so that it can breath FIRE
- Kristin Cavallari shares 'naughty' Christmas photo
- Terms of Service
- SantaCon annual bar crawl comes to Times Square
Drunk tractor driver decapitates three people in head-on crash (1.50)
Russian troops threaten to shoot Ukrainian soldiers in tense stand-off (0)
Petra Nemcova: 'The tsunami taught me to follow my heart' (0)
Older people should use social media to prevent decline in health, study finds (0)
Dick Cheney remains unrepentant over CIA's torture program (0)
Kourtney Kardashian has baby boy, third child with Scott Disick (0)
Ben Stiller remembers Robin Williams as a 'genius' and 'a really genuine person' (0)
Daniel Perez booked on charges of murdering wife Erica pictured (0)
Woman plunges to her death in the middle of a Manhattan street packed with Christmas shoppers (0)
Jeb Bush to release emails and an e-book in sign that he plans to run for president (0)
New York teen made $72M trading stocks on his lunch breaks (0)
Taylor Zimmers in critical condition in Oregon high school shooting pictured (0)
Court lets Pennsylvania widow keep home sold over interest on $6.30 tax bill (0)
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones put their Majorcan villa up for sale (0)
Families of Newtown victims to file lawsuit on anniversary of Sandy Hook shooting (0)
Sir Chris Hogn keeps most of £780m in Britain's biggest divorce (0)


