Gifting has been around for a long time across numerous civilizations. Many cultures use gifts as a way to say thank you or to show one another they care. Gifts can be given for love, friendship, piety, solidarity, special occasions such as holidays, birthdays, weddings, baby showers, or sometimes just because. Gifts are suppose to make the recipient happy, but sometimes giving the wrong gift (unintentionally and unknowingly) can defeat the purpose of gift-giving.
Gifting is a great ordeal. It’s hard when it shouldn’t be. It takes time and effort to get the perfect gift, but even then what may seem like the perfect gift to you may actually be an useless gift in your recipients eyes. In the past I have received some gifts that I didn’t like.
When someone receives a gift, they wont complain about it or tell you they don’t like it, after all that would be just plain rude (they know it’s the thought that counts, right? 
). But what if you could always get the perfect gift for someone because you somehow, someway had access to the wish list stored in their brain? Then not only would you get them a special gift, but you would be guaranteed that what you got for them would make them really happy and they would love it!
Whenever a birthday comes around or even Christmas, I struggle. Sometimes I just don’t know what to give to my friends and family, even though I know them well. Most of the time they already have everything they want. This dilemma causes me to procrastinate leading me to wait til the last minute to get the gifts. Then I begin to worry that the gifts I give will end up in a closet somewhere to never be used or worse thrown away. A sad reality. I’m sure in the past you have received gifts that you accepted with a huge smile, but deep inside you were like “oh great, just what I needed” in a sarcastic tone. We are all guilty. Again, this is because gifting is hard.
Sometimes you are just beginning to know a person and really don’t know their tastes. Other times you know the person really well, yet you’re clueless what they’ll like or perhaps you want to really give them an epic gift. For example, my sister loves her make-up. So I know any make-up gift will make her happy, or so I think. However, I don’t know what type of mascara she likes, I don’t know what lip gloss she wants or what make-up brand is her favorite. I’m a dude, I don’t really know that kind of stuff. I suppose I can ask her directly, but that would defeat the “surprise” factor. I could also just get her a gift card, but that locks her into certain stores. I could also just give her cash, but to me that doesn’t feel like a real gift and has no personal touch to it. Or how about if she wants a $200 pair of jeans, but I don’t want to spend that much money on a gift. Maybe her 9 other friends are going to buy her gifts as well, so what if I joined forces with her friends and we all chipped in, say $20 each. Then she can get those pair of jeans without costing me or her friends an arm or leg, but best of all she’ll get exactly what she wants!
All this stressing and guessing over gifting led me to try to solve the problem of gift giving. In 2012 I decided to solve this by building WishBooklet. WishBooklet.com makes it super simple for anyone to create wish lists of stuff they want. They can add stuff from virtually any online store in world wide web! They can then share their wish list with all their friends and family. Now, their friends and families can know exactly what they really want and gift it. And if they want an expensive gift, their friends and family are able to pitch in for it, also known as crowdfunding or crowdsourcing.
You can start using WishBooklet right now. It’s free to create wish lists! Let’s end bad gifts.
