We've been working on this one for a little while, and we're excited to finally let the cat out of the bag... we've launched an online Tuck Shop!

Everyone loves buying things online these days, and so we thought we would join the club! Starting today, we've got an online Tuck Shop available for you to purchase a few of the various items that we sell in our physical store during the summer and fall.

During the year, we get a few calls from parents who are interested in purchasing a Beacon hoodie or t-shirt as a gift for their camper, especially around holidays and birthdays. It was hard for us to track these sorts of things, because we have to charge for payment somehow, but didn't have a great system for tracking how many hoodies were available, and in what sizes, colours, etc. All this meant that we often said "sorry, we can't" to parents who wanted to do something special for campers. 

Except that Beacon is in the business of trying to say "yes" instead of "no". 

After some research, we partnered with Shopify to create a Tuck Shop platform that allows us to offer online sales to parents, but also allows us to track our inventory much more efficiently! Last summer, the first phase of this platform was testing it during the busiest time of year: July and August. We offered credit card sales for parents on the first and last day of camp, and also fine-tuned the way that we handled day-to-day Tuck Shop sales during our youth and family camps. There were glitches, but we think we've got them smoothed out. 

Phase Two was to figure out what we're launching today: online sales of a limited number of products that we think you might like. We won't sell everything online (you'll still have to come to camp for your chocolate bars and pop), but we have some things here that will definitely keep you happy. 

When your camper comes to camp in the summer, we're still going to be using cash as the primary payment method in our little shop. We see a lot of value in helping our campers learn to "do the math" as they figure out what they can buy, and how they have to make their tuck money last for the entire week. So - no sending credit cards with you Junior Girls or Junior Boys (and sorry, we can't take debit - we're not quite there yet)!

We've been testing the online sales with staff for the last couple of weeks, and now we think we're ready to open it up to the general public. Please be kind with us as we figure all this out - it's both very exciting, and very scary: we want you to love this, but we know there will be growing pains as we figure things out. 

Without further ado: click below to visit Beacon's online store!