GiftStarter looks to take hassle out of gift giving

SEATTLE — A recently launched gifting website with a familiar sounding name promises to make it better to receive than give a gift.

The recently launched Web site GiftStarter – not Kickstarter – claims to be reinventing the gifting business so that family members, friends and co-workers are able to co-mingle individual budgets to offer recipients a more substantial gift.

“We are on a mission to bring the humanity, personality and joy of real life interactions back to gift giving, using technology as an enabler – not a focal point,” said Arry Yu, GiftStarter’s CEO and co-founder.

The way it works is simple. Users launch a campaign for a gift and then GiftStarter does the rest, from helping collect the money to ordering and shipping the gift with a personalized handmade card from all contributors.

GiftStarter said it has more than four million gifts available that are sourced from reliable brands and retailers such as Amazon, B&H Photo Video, Kohl’s and REI. Users simply to choose a gift, and invite family and friends as contributors. Central to the Giftstarter model is a payment parsing platform breaks the gift up into pieces in a visual, easy to track mosaic that illustrates who’s contributing what.

Each person can pitch in as little or as much as they wish and GiftStarter eliminates the need to collect money or chase people down for cash. In addition to recipient receiving a higher value gift, retailers benefit from a higher transaction with the $381 being the average amount spent on a GiftStarter gift.

The company also offers a Gift Concierge service that works like a personal shopping assistant to curate a list of gift ideas to help users find the perfect gift for any occasion.

Yu and co-founder Christie Gettler created the company after winning first place at startup weekend hackathon at Seattle ReDesign.