The Habits of Highly Effective Gift Giving - Part One: What's Important?

As the holiday season is rapidly approaching, now is the perfect time to start thinking about what presents to get your friends and family this year.  If you are like me, then you hope to find something that is a little more unique than a gift card, a little more personal than a basket of fruit.  However, coming up with the perfect gift for someone can be a challenge.

Since we get such unique and creative ideas for gifts, I've taken note of some of the patterns I've found in what great gifts people give each other and have us make for them.  This will be the first of a few articles on some gift-giving tips for the holidays and throughout the year to help you get a present that your “giftee” will enjoy and remember.

What is Important to the ‘Giftee?’

Each one of us has things that are important, that matter to us.  Through our personal experiences, we develop biases, loves, likes, and sometimes dislikes.  For example, I have a love of Asian cuisine.  On the other hand, I have a strong dislike of beets (my wife loves them, but I am not yet bold enough even to taste one for her sake:  I have been beet free for ten years and am glad of it).

On a more personal level, I love music and music related gifts are always appreciated by me.  When someone gets me a music related gift, it makes me feel as if they know me pretty well.

I also am a huge, enormous fan of Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien in general.  For Halloween this year, I grew out a goatee and went out to a trunk-or-treat event as Aragorn, my wife was Arwen Evenstar, and our boy was Frodo Baggins.  My wife for the past couple of years has taken me out to the movies for my birthday to see The Hobbit movies.  (This year is the first one we will need a baby sitter to do this:  we’ll see if it happens).

How can you do this for the special giftee in your life?  Start making a list of some of the things that person values.  Is there a book series they really like?  Is there some thing from their childhood that they like to reminisce about?  Is there a place that is particularly special to them?  Is there a sports team that means a lot to them?  Is there something that they are a huge fan of?

Here are some examples from our customers (names excluded for privacy):

-A customer recently had us create a mouse pad with a map of France on it, and “Merci Beaucoup” written on it.  The one receiving the mouse pad had lived in this area of Paris for a good portion of her life and hoped to return there some day.

-A father of two girls who loved going out shooting brought in their rifles to have their names engraved and a little design engraved in the wood that represented their nicknames.

-Someone knew of a girl’s love of riding, and bought her a saw-horse.  The saw horse was then brought in to have custom-made wooden letters cut out and then attached to the saw-horse to spell out the girl’s name.

-A husband loved fly-fishing, and the wife brought in a metal fly to have engraved:  “you are the greatest catch of my life.”

I do have to say, we’ve got some pretty creative customers!  I've taken some of their ideas and used them for myself.  For example, my wife loves to eat ice-cream out of little clear glass cups we got when a church house was being cleaned out and they were giving away old dishes that weren't needed anymore.  She prides herself on eating only the serving size instead of a whole big bowl of ice-cream, so I took one of these cups from home and engraved “Mommy’s Ice Cream Cup” onto it.

Shared Experiences

-For our honeymoon, a friend of ours who had helped us plan our wedding reception got us a sparkling apple cider.  This friend, knowing my health problems and that I had to avoid sugar, got a kind that has no sugar in it.  It had been the first time I’d been able to drink a soda in a long time without fear of getting sick.  So, we drank the cider that night to celebrate getting married.  Fast forward a year and a half, and we were in the hospital at Mountain View Hospital, and they offered a complimentary dinner to the new parents.  I had heard about Perrier Water from my brother and saw it on the menu.  I knew it didn't have any sugar in it, so we tried it.  What I didn't know was that not only it didn't have sugar, but it didn't have other things (like a good flavor).  However, we drank our Perrier Water to celebrate nonetheless.

For our two year anniversary, I took the sparkling cider bottles and turned them into vases and engraved on one:  “To Celebrate the Start of Our Eternal Family,” and the other with our marriage date.  The Perrier Water bottles have yet to be finished, but they will have “To Celebrate a New Family Member” on one and our little Tommy’s Birthday on the other.

Shared experiences and likes are another great way to find a great present.  What’s something that you’ve shared in common?  Did you meet at a special place?  Is there some joke that you share?  Do you like to do something together?  (I think of Russell from “Up” when he says he used to go to an ice-cream shop with his dad and they’d count up the different colored cars.  I also think of when he says:  “it may seem boring, but I think sometimes it’s the boring things that matter most.  I always tear up when I see that movie!)

Any ideas of your own?  Share some fun ideas you have of possible gifts!  Maybe someone’s idea will help you brainstorm your own perfect Christmas gift.