The Wraply Team Blog
Birthday Gift Ideas
It's great having Wraply to help you and your friends get together to buy the perfect gift for someone - but what gift should that be?
Thinking of birthday gift ideas is hard - we know that. That's why we're going to regularly blog about great gift ideas, creative gifts we spot, and special offers on gifts we hear about.
In this first article I'm going to suggest great ways to brainstorm birthday gift ideas. Whenever you have to think of a birthday gift idea for someone, simply work through these steps:
1. Useful Gifts
This is the place to start. We always appreciate gifts more if they make a difference to our everyday lives. The great thing about Wraply is that, as a group, you can now afford to get this kind of gift - rather than each just getting some kind of £10 novelty gift that will just end up in landfill in a few months!
So what would be useful for the person you have in mind? What does their weekday life look like? Do they have a long commute? Maybe an Apple iPod Nano 16Gb would help them pass the time?
Perhaps they like food, but don't have time to cook when they get home? A slow cooker means they could just pop the ingredients in before they leave the house, and come home to a delicious dinner.
I'm not suggesting specific gifts so much as simply suggesting thinking through someone's day - in the week or at a weekend - and thinking about where you could make a difference with a gift.
That's the kind that will end up being the perfect birthday gift.
2. Gifts for Hobbies/Passions
Another area to think about is what they do in their leisure time - or dream of doing.
Some people have obvious hobbies like golf or gardening. But others may have less visible pass-times - writing, collecting something, some kind of art or craft and so on.
But you could also think beyond hobbies to their passions and ambitions. Maybe they've always talked about starting a business, learning to sing or play an instrument.
Really thinking through this area - perhaps even brainstorming with others who know the gift recipient - could spark a great idea for you, that will end up bringing a big smile to the birthday boy or girl's face.
3. Experience Gifts
For those who really do have everything and don't need more stuff, 'experiences' can be the perfect birthday gift. Virgin Experiences and Red Letter Days are the market leaders for gift experiences in the UK.
Maybe your gift recipient would like to learn how to make michelin star style canapes and cocktails, or even take a flying lesson! There are hundreds of experiences offering everything from adrenalin to pampering.
4. Memory Gifts
Finally maybe you can give a gift that will either capture memories for the future - a photoshoot of the family perhaps. Or something that brings back memories from the past - perhaps a big framed print of a treasured photo, or a specially made book of photos, letters or even recipes.
Brainstorming in each of these areas could help you to come up with the perfect birthday gift idea. Good luck!
Wraply is Live!
We've been quietly live for a while now, with real customers using our site as they discover it. This has helped us find and iron out a few minor issues to make Wraply even better.
We're now ready to officially go live, and start telling the world about Wraply to spread the group-giving goodness.
Thanks to everyone that has used Wraply to get their dream gift so far - hopefully it's made quite a few people very happy!
Wraply - one month in
It's now been a month since Wraply was piloted at the Launch48 weekend.
Behind the scenes the Wraply team has been busy, and we're very nearly ready to unveil the fruits of our labours. Here's what we've been up to: >READ MORE
- Recruiting the founding team, and deciding on our roles and way of working
- Arranging offices for Wraply HQ
- Setting up the limited company
- Opening a bank account
- Setting up business Paypal account
- Getting legal agreements in place
- Setting up accounts with suppliers
Wraply & Leon
The Guardian has started a small business section which includes the twitter business diary of Henry Dimbleby, the founder of Leon's Restaurants.
I'm going to be particularly interested in following his diary, as the Leon restaurant in Spitalfields Market is very near Wraply HQ - and is where we hold some of our planning sessions to build our own business! >READ MORE
Starting Work on Wraply - Launch48 Day 1, Morning
This is part of a series of posts about the Launch48 weekend at the Paypal HQ in London, in which six web businesses developed a prototype of their idea in one weekend.
On the Friday evening we had selected which six projects would be developed, and my idea for Wraply was chosen (hurray!).
On Saturday morning we all gathered back at Paypal's offices for our first team meetings. I'd put together a plan the night before for how I wanted to organise the team, and started putting it into action. >READ MORE
Organising the Team
Launch48 - the Wraply Pitch
In my previous post I wrote about the first part of the Launch48 weekend - the conference giving advice and training to web entrepreneurs.
To recap, the idea of Launch48 was for 150 entrepreneurs, developers, designers and others to gather in the Paypal HQ in London to develop 6 web businesses over a weeekend.
At 7pm on Friday the 16th October, the time came for everyone to pitch their business ideas. >READ MORE
Wraply is born at Launch48
Although the idea for Wraply was conceived some time ago, it was born at the Launch48 weekend on the 16th-18th October 2009. In my next few posts I'll write about what we did, and what we learned in this process.
This first post is about the conference on the Friday - which gave us training and advice to prepare for the weekend's work. During the day I also did a liveblog of the Launch48 conference on my personal blog. >READ MORE