Problem 🔍
I don't know about you guys but I'm truly dumbfounded why it is still so complicated to give people gifts. Almost nobody knows our physical address, which quite frankly, is a good thing.
And even if they do, they wouldn't know when will you be at home which may turn a kind gesture into an annoying trip down to the post office.
That's why most people would just rather revert to gift cards because that is the easiest thing to give without an address and allows the recipient to select whatever they want.
Solution 💡
Startups like Goody & Loop & Tie are helping to make gifting super easy - all you need to know is the recipient's phone number.
So when you send a gift, the recipient receives a notification that prompts them to enter their own address, removing all of the awkwardness
Opportunities 🔨
- One of the perks of living in a developing nation is that we could see what works in the States and copy their model, in this case, the Goody model
- A lot of small D2C brands have emerged out of the pandemic, selling baked goods and handcrafts. You could build a niche D2C marketplace while applying the Goody model
- Build a gifting D2C brand. Get ideas from subreddits like r/Crafts r/EtsySellers, r/somethingimade and r/Gifts
- I think the larger opportunity is to create an API or chrome extension that enables e-commerce companies to do gifting without a physical address. Like the ubiquitous buy-now-pay-later options, customers get to select a gifting option and enter an email address and the company does the rest of the work, collecting physical addresses and fulfilling the orders
- Build a Shopify App. The Shopify App Store is a $12 billion industry and with the immense growth of Shopify, just charging a few dollars can add up quickly given the market size and would make for a very profitable business
One good thing that came out of the pandemic is that people are starting their own side hustles. Why not take it up a notch and add a seamless gifting feature to your product or service?
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