Cookie Price War
Sends Adult Troops
Into Marketing Battle
--Some Girl Scout Councils Raise
Cost, but Others Don't;
Thin Hints of `Rip-offs'
By Rebecca Blumenstein
03/08/1996
The Wall Street Journal
Page A1
(Copyright (c) 1996, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
When Mike Elliott brought an order form for Girl Scout cookies to work, he wasn't looking for trouble.
Mr. Elliott, an employee at Chrysler Corp.'s glass factory in Dearborn, Mich., started asking co-workers to buy a few
boxes on behalf of his girlfriend's eight-year-old daughter. "I worked for four or five hours, and suddenly this lady
came up to me and said that a guy who worked 50 feet down the line from me was selling them cheaper," Mr. Elliott
says. "The first thing that everyone thinks is, `You're trying to rip me off.'"
In an increasingly competitive marketplace, price wars are breaking out over Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties.
"It's devastating," says Penny Bailer, executive director of the Michigan Metro Girl Scout Council, which serves the
Detroit metropolitan area. "People are looking at the Girl Scout cookies as a consumer issue, not a fund-raising
issue."
The 36,500-member Michigan Metro Council, citing rising costs and the need to subsidize inner-city troops,
reluctantly raised its price to $3 a box this year. The neighboring -- but much smaller -- Macomb County Girl Scout
Council stayed at $2.50 a box, setting the stage for a marketing battle. However, most of the troops in this skirmish
aren't Scouts: they're grown-ups, who peddle the cookies at work.
"Initially, people thought I had increased the price," says Lester Evans, who put up an order form at the Bloomfield
Hills, Mich., post office where he works. "It caused a lot of people to question me."
The Michigan Metro council recently sent out a newsletter noting that competition is "creating strife in some
workplaces and neighborhoods and anger among parents and customers." It offered to help troops find cookie-sales
locations "away from the $2.50 competition."
Mr. Elliott says he quickly tired of justifying higher-priced cookies to co-workers at the Chrysler plant. A few
people canceled orders they had placed with him and gave their business to parents hawking lower-priced cookies.
"Some people don't care if your little girl is that special girl. They are going to buy the cheapest cookies they can
find."
Such scenarios have been repeated in other parts of the country, as many of the nation's 330 Girl Scout councils go
through their annual pricing debate. Officials say they can't adopt the simple solution -- setting one national price -because their parent organization, Girl Scouts USA, follows the Sherman Act, which prohibits price fixing.
With each council individually incorporated as a nonprofit organization, Girl Scout officials say the law, originally
designed to rein in robber barons, could apply to them as well. "In being good citizens, we choose to abide by the
spirit of the law," says Girl Scouts USA spokeswoman Ellen Ach. At a national meeting of council leaders last
month in San Diego, Girl Scouts USA officials reiterated their position that prices shouldn't be discussed among
local councils.
Last year, half of Southern California's 10 councils raised their price to $3 a box, while the other half held to $2.50.
This resulted in "a few calls from office managers and plant managers who wanted to make sure their employees
weren't cheating," says Florence Newsom, executive director of the Los Angeles Girl Scout Council.
This month, as scouts in Los Angeles begin a massive cookie sale that will place girls in the lobbies of every
building of more than 20 stories, only one council has kept the price at $2.50. (Safety concerns have made door-todoor selling a relic of the past in many regions.)
Some theorize that people may be more attuned to cookie prices these days simply because there is so much new
fund-raising competition. "People are having a tougher time getting the funds, and they are looking at product fundraisers as a way to do it," says Russell Lemieux, executive director of the Association of Fund-Raisers and Direct
Sellers, representing companies that produce merchandise for resale by charitable groups. The association's
membership has risen to 720 from 70 since 1990.
And when the sixth-grade class is selling wrapping paper to raise money for computers or the Little League is
selling candy bars for new uniforms, many parents who buy Girl Scout cookies are expecting business in return.
"There is a problem with fund-raisers," says Kathy Rogers, a Grosse Pointe, Mich., troop leader. "There's a lot of
reciprocity."
Here in Michigan, the clash of goodwill vs. frugality is coming to a head. After estimating demand from initial
orders, legions of "cookie moms" in minivans pulled up to semitrailer trucks at four-minute intervals to pick up their
loads last week. Michigan Metro officials say they have seen a drop of 2% to 3% in initial sales, while Macomb
County says advance orders are up 3%.
Macomb County Girl Scout officials say they have asked parents not to flaunt their price advantage. But, they
concede, that is difficult when the success of entire troops and individual scouts is defined by the number of boxes
sold. The cookie sale is a requirement for any Brownie or Girl Scout to participate in special activities, often
determining camp and field trips for the year. The troop of Mr. Evans's 11-year-old daughter, Jenisha, is going to
Disney World with its cookie money. (So far this year, she has sold an impressive 1,300 boxes -- though she is still
running behind the 2,555 boxes she sold last year at the lower price.)
Girls are told that if customers ask about the price difference, they should explain the economic factors at play -- that
the Metro council serves four times as many members as its "sister" council, and runs three more camps. Michigan
Metro says its troops receive a profit of at least 45 cents on each box sold; in Macomb County, the minimum is 32
cents.
But some parents say the girls are too young to understand such concepts. "My daughter is seven years old. She just
said, `How many did I sell?, Mom?'" says Patty Williams, who has battled the price increase during her first year as
a "cookie mom" in a Michigan Metro community. Some regional officials have called her, she says, complaining
that her Brownie troop's 200-box average falls far below the 700-box average. "I don't know anyone who went door
to door," she says. "It's basically the parents. What do the girls learn from that?"
Jennifer Martin, an eight-year-old from Madison Heights, near the border of Macomb County, isn't into the price
war. "It's been fun," she says of this year's cookie sales, made mostly to friends and relatives. Her mom, Lynn, a
troop co-leader, has a different view. "The whole point is to give them a sort of pride in themselves," she says. "It's
sad that the other side of the street seems to be undercutting us."