Present buying stress?? A quick insight into some of the web's best gift buying sites…
So the stress of it all is creeping up again isn’t it, and you swore last year that you wouldn’t leave everything ’til Christmas Eve ever again, because last year your mother’s frantic un-wrapping of her present was followed by a faux smile and a “wow, an electric tin opener, brill!”. And a festive day of, “You do like it, don’t you mum?”, “It’s lovely darling, so….practical.” Never again, this time i’m putting in the time, the research, the graft that any self-respecting personal shopper would be jealous of.
Sure Amazon and Ebay are full of gifts, but unless you know what you are after then these sites are just a bit overwhelming. Well, in an effort to make things a little easier and curtail any future pressie disasters, we’ve had a scout around the good ol interweb and hand-picked some of our favourite, juiciest, ripest, joyous gift sites available.
The website is brilliant and has something for everyone due to the absolute huge amount of products on offer. Basically, the main concept behind the site is to sell items that come directly from small independent businesses. So essentially this incorporates hundreds of shops in one. The site is easy to use and has a great rep for fast effective delivery. So if you are looking for an original, unusual or chic pressie, this could be your answer.
‘I want one of those‘ is a typical gift site with lots of ideas, and a handy gift search engine to narrow your hunt by age, sex etc. This site primarily offers the type of pressies that are considered boys toys, gadgets and gizmos, with less emphasis on groups who might expect something a bit more thoughtful and elegant for the girlfriend, sister, granny etc. More geek than chic really, but packed full of stuff.
Culture label is a fascinating little site with some arty, educated gifts ideal for those who love a bit of culture and, style and originality. The site offers products from 70 leading museum shops, galleries, artists and culture institutions. Each item is hand-picked by a team of arts partners and there is basically everything on offer to broken into manageable categories. P.S. the site also has an excellent blog which showcases some exciting new happenings in the world of modern art, i found this stuff fascinating http://www.culturelabel.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/24/is-it-wrong-to-love-little-people-this-much/
This site is basically a collection of all the latest, most contemporary gifts available. Whether you are looking for something for your gran or your man, freshtrend has ideas for everyone. The site is basically a blog page, with links to the cheapest sites that sell the goods. Most of which are American, but it’s easy to find the British equivalent.
Let me know how it goes..!!!