Have you heard of Wantful? I saw an article about it on Fast Company’s website and in short: it’s an amazing website where you can customize and create your own gift catalog to give someone. The personalized catalog is sent to the gift recipient and that person gets to choose the gift s/he’d like to receive from you! Wantful then sends the gift directly to them and bills you for it. Awesome.

Here’s How It Works:

First you fill in some blanks on Wantful.com to tell them who your gift catalog is for and how much you’re willing to spend. I’m going to create a mock gift catalog for myself and share the screenshots with you all! (You can create your own on their website if you’d like!)

Then, you answer a series of questions about the gift recipient. This helps Wantful know what the recipient is like, what he or she would like to receive, etc.

After answering the series of questions (how cool is that style range slider?), hundreds of gifts show up on your screen. You can scroll through them and add them to your catalog as you go. The gifts that appeared for my gift catalog were very in tune with my likes and style! Here are just a few of the gift options I received…

After I chose 16 items for my catalog, I was directed to another screen where I could personalize it.

Once your little book is to your liking, simply hit “finish” and tell Wantful where to send the catalog. The entire process is super easy and user-friendly, not to mention very fun!

Why It’s Awesome

This is one of the most interesting and innovative products I’ve seen in a long time. In our society, it’s so common to hear people complain that they have no idea what to buy their wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/roommate/mom/dad for any number of occasions. People seem to have everything they need these days.

This product provides a great solution to a common problem.

What do you think? Would you use Wantful to create a gift catalog?

{This post is part of a series pertaining to a New Products and Branding class at Elon University.}