May 7, 2010
A New Approach To Holiday Gift-Giving
A New Approach To Holiday Gift-Giving Cliff Ennico www.creators.com If you are like most business owners, buying holiday gifts for your best clients and other important business relationships is one of the most stress-inducing things you do each year. Here are some of the problems: You want to get a personalized gift for each recipient that shows you gave the matter some thought (not the usual pen-and-pencil set, fruit basket, or pocket calendar with your company name emblazoned on the cover), but you don#146;t have time to get an individual gift for each person. You are afraid the recipient won#146;t like the gift, won#146;t be able to use it, already has it, or (Heaven forbid) will be offended by the gift. You are afraid 10 other people have given the recipient the same gift, and you will appear unimaginative. December is your busiest time of year and you simply don#146;t have the time to shop or pore through a three-foot-high stack of gift catalogues to find the perfect gift.Wouldn#146;t it be a lot simpler if people could simply tell you what they wanted, so you could just give it to them, make them happy, and be done with it? Don#146;t laugh. One of the hottest trends is holiday gift-giving is something that#146;s been around for decades #150; the gift registry. If you think they#146;re just for weddings and baby showers, think again. #147;People are doing more and more gift registries for holiday gifts,#148; according to Hans Xu, founder of Felicite.com, Inc. ( www.felicite.com ), one of the nation#146;s leading online gift registries. #147;When you factor the price of gas, traffic congestion, and all that goes into the cost of buying gifts, to be able to make the purchase from an online gift registry is a real convenience for a lot of people,#148; says Hsu, who adds that #147;it#146;s also good for the environment#148;. A typical registry is limited to gifts from one merchant, so registrants have to set up, and gift givers visit, several different registries; Felicite.com enables recipients to set up one registry and register gifts from any merchant in the United States. They can also register cash gifts such as donations to charity, a scholarship fund, or a down payment on a new house. According to Xu, a lot of people who are environmentally conscious and oppose the materialistic concept of #147;we need more stuff#148; find online gift registries an excellent way to channel funds into their favorite charities. #147;Just be sure not to pick political causes only,#148; advises Xu, explaining that #147;while having people register for charitable gifts is a great way to tell people who you are and what you believe in, it#146;s better to give people a range of different types of charities, just in case their priorities are different than yours.#148; According to Xu, many gift registries on Felicite.com are for offbeat or one-of-a-kind things you can#146;t find in traditional retail outlets, such as works of art by individual artists. Hsu#146;s favorite gift-giving story is about a newly married couple who couldn#146;t decide whether to register for a big-screen television set (for him) or a luxury hot tub (for her). They registered for both, and they got both. Felicite.com has a network of about 120 merchants around the country. If a gift from one of these merchants is purchased, Felicite.com will send the order to the merchant for delivery. If the merchant is not part of Felicite.com#146;s network, then the gift is registered as a cash gift, and Felicite.com will send the contribution to the registrant so that they can pick up the gift themselves. Felicite.com is free to registrants. It makes money from commissions, product discounts and advertising. For example, when it places a physical order, it may get a commission or discount from the merchant it is sending the order to. On cash gifts, it charges a 4.9% transaction fee. Felicite.com also has a unique partial purchase feature (patent pending) that allows gift givers to share the cost of gifts. This way they can collaborate on a large gift. What about the element of #147;surprise#148; in gift-giving? Xu feels it is highly overrated: #147;Realistically speaking, do you really believe that if someone is surprised by a gift they don#146;t want or like, they are really going to keep it?#148; asks Xu, pointing out that the long gift return lines after the holidays are full of people who were, #147;surprised by a gift.#148; Yeah, well, okay, but what about the personalized aspect of giving? Doesn#146;t an online gift registry help make the world a colder place by making it easy for people to avoid taking the time and trouble to find the right gifts? Xu strongly disagrees: #147;Does it make you feel warm and cozy inside if your friend took 5 hours to get you the wrong gift, as opposed to 3 minutes to get you the right one? Of course not. If you were a true friend, you would try to save him some trouble.#148; Registering online, in Xu#146;s view, can be viewed as a compassionate and selfless act. Your friend gets to spend more time with family, and there is one less shopper to tie up traffic and parking. Cliff Ennico ( cennico@legalcareer.com ) is a syndicated columnist, author and host of the PBS television series 'Money Hunt'. His latest book is #145;Small Business Survival Guide#146; (Adams Media, $12.95). This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at www.creators.com . COPYRIGHT 2005 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.

Posted by Staff at 1:48 AM