Land’s End Web Site Wants to See Kids’ Backpack Wishes

Kids can customize their virtual packs at the retailer’s Packland Web site

Land’s End has launched an interactive site that will let kids add a backstory to their virtual backpacks and offers parents the chance to win a backpack by posting their child’s creation to Facebook.

Kids can go online to visit Packland and chose a theme for their virtual backpack, placing it in the jungle, at the seashore, in a desert spy lab or in a fantasy kingdom. They can also customize the pack with arms, legs—or a jet pack or propeller—other add-on gear, different colors and custom mongrams. They can then save or print the pack they’ve customized.

The child creators themselves can’t upload the virtual packs to most social networks since Packland’s target market is largely under the common age minimum of 13. But from Aug. 1 through Aug. 5, land’s end offered parents the chance to upload their kids’ designs to the photo gallery of the Land’s End Facebook page. Twenty-five winners chosen by the company will choose a free backpack from a line of four selected styles.

The Packland site also links directly to Backpack headquarters on the main Land’s End Web site.

In a separate promotion running Aug. 8 through Aug. 22, every backpack purchased through any Land’s End channel (the Web site, phone sales, Land’s End Inlet stores or the land’s End Shops inside stores of parent Sears) will include one of six “Pack Pal” items, such as a mini-flashlight, that let kids customize their real-world backpacks.