Nick's Blog » selling

Girl Scout Cookie Conspiracy

Nick — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:10:31 +0000

Sure, Girl Scout cookies are delicious. But are they more delicious because they’re only available for a limited time each year? Scarcity, whether manufactured or real, helps give an item value.

Take diamonds, for example. A large, perfectly cut stone is extremely rare, so it commands a high price. Or the Nintendo Wii, which has sold way above retail on eBay during each of the last 3 holiday seasons since it wasn’t available in stores.

The Girl Scouts have perfected manufactured scarcity. Because of that, we pay more for their product even though they have lower costs than any other cookie-maker. Think about it — no excess inventory, everything is pre-ordered, and their entire sales force is unpaid child labor! And we’re happy to do it because the cookies are great and it’s for a good cause.

Did You Know?

Depending on where you live, your favorite Girl Scout cookies may go by a different name. Here in California, Samoas are known as Caramel deLites. I learned from another blog that this is due to the two different commercial bakeries contracted to make Girl Scout cookies. Little Brownie Bakers makes the familiar Samoas, while ABC Bakers put out the Caramel deLites.

And, according to the (unscientific) study done by the other blogger, the name-brand Samoas won out in a taste test. So the folks being served by ABC Bakers are getting short-changed!

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Selling Candy at Summer Camp

Nick — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:02:12 +0000

When it comes to my entrepreneurial history, I was getting a little smarter by the time high school rolled around. Before heading off for a week at scout camp when I was 15, mom and I stopped at Costco and picked up a box of skittles bags and a big bag of caramel apple pops. This represented about all the extra room I had in my pack, and was a minimal amount of financial risk. I think $14 was the total.

Selling candy at summer camp was a great business venture for two reasons:

1. The camp trading post has a monopoly so they feel they can charge whatever they want. It was easy to undercut them and still maintain a decent profit margin.

2. Parents give their kids spending money for the week at camp. Disposable income, no parental supervision, and cheap sugar made for a winning combination.

The skittles sold for $0.60 apiece or 2 for $1. The caramel apple pops were $0.25 each or $5 for $1. I was sold out by Tuesday. All told, I think I doubled my initial investment that week, but could have made way more if I’d had room for more inventory.

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Selling Baseball Cards

Nick — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:51:46 +0000

When we were kids, my friends and I would set up shop on the sidewalk with a card table and sell baseball cards. It wasn’t the best business model since pretty much our only customers were each other, and the only thing we’d buy with the proceeds were more baseball cards. Still, there were some marketing lessons to be learned that closely relate to the “4 P’s” they teach in business school.

Product – You have to have the cards of desirable players in good condition.

Price – Just because the Beckett magazine price guide says your card is worth $10 doesn’t mean someone in the neighborhood will give you $10 for it. This was dad’s favorite point when I got excited about a card that was “worth” a lot — it’s really only worth what someone will pay for it, he’d say.

Placement – Some neighborhood locations just worked better than others. Not a lot of car / bike / foot traffic at the end of a cul-de-sac, for example.

Promotion – At one point we decided that a lack of advertising was hurting business, so we wrote “Card Sale” and drew arrows on paper plates and stapled them to mail boxes and stop signs. Apparently this was in violation of the homeowners association’s rules. A real stroke of genius was our invention of the “grab bag” — a mixed set of mystery cards sold for a fixed price. Basically it was like opening a new pack from the store; you knew there were going to be some bad cards, but there might be a superstar!

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