Girl Scouts get lessons in how the market works

"Indeed, it is. Entrepreneurs everyday must figure out ways to get around idiotic regulations, on top of satisfying customers and shouldering heavy tax burdens."

Girl Scouts get lessons in how the market works
By Douglas French | Special to the News
Published: March 14, 2011

Spring is in the air and that means Girl Scouts are selling cookies. Of course, when I was a kid, my classmates in the scouts would be peddling Thin Mints and the like door-to-door: Excellent training to overcome fears, deal with a variety of different people, teaching the satisfaction of offering a good product and not only making the sale, but being responsible for delivering that product later as promised, since customers paid up front.

These days doctors don't make house calls and neither do Girl Scouts. Scouts and their mothers are now stationed in front of supermarkets and other businesses and attempt to flag down busy shoppers as they enter or exit the store. "Sir, would you like to...." is about all they can get out before I'm out of earshot.

Not to be rude, but these girls aren't interested in a certain granddaughter in New Jersey who instead of parking herself in front of stores on weekends, employs the other current cookie selling strategy which is to make sure each and every relative living in the continental United States, in addition to anyone employed by her father, buys the bare minimum of cookie goodness. No muss, no fuss, and she makes her quota.

It seems Girl Scouts in Savannah, Ga., a long time ago thought it would be apropos and clever marketing to sell their cookies on the busy sidewalk fronting the childhood home of Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts back in 1912.

However, the little girls in green, after decades of selling in front of 10 E. Oglethorpe Ave., ran smack into Savannah city hall. Reportedly, someone complained, which prompted Randolph Scott, the city of Savannah's zoning administrator, to thumb through his rulebook. Sure enough the girls were setting up their table on the public sidewalk, which violates city ordinance.

He told the girls and their mothers they should set up on the other side of the property. However, scout leaders told him fire marshals wouldn't allow it because it blocked an exit route from the house.

Savannah isn't the only Georgia city harassing cookie-selling scouts. A police officer in Villa Rica told Girl Scouts they had to quit selling outside a strip mall because they didn't have a peddler's permit.

Taking the high road, Jan McKinney, who heads product sales for the Girl Scouts of Historic Georgia said, "We try to teach them that in business you have to adjust to things that happen, adapt to the market and follow the law. It's a real-world experience."

Indeed, it is. Entrepreneurs everyday must figure out ways to get around idiotic regulations, on top of satisfying customers and shouldering heavy tax burdens.

As it turns out, the cookie crumbled in the scouts' favor. Once this became more than a local story, the Savannah Board of Aldermen came to their senses and provided an exemption for the girls to sell their cookies where they had been for years prior.

Thoughtful scouts will no doubt take away this lesson from the controversy: Have friends at city hall.

http://www2.oanow.com/news/2011/mar/14/french-girl-scouts-get-lessons-how-market-works-ar-1578039/