Spoil Takes The Hunt Out Of Gift-Giving

Spoil

Y Combinator-backed Spoil is looking to take the pain out of gift-giving with the launch of its personalized gift concierge service.

It’s a pitch that either sounds amazing (if you’re lazy) or kind of sad: give Spoil a description of a friend, acquaintance, or relative’s interests and personality, and they’ll send them a gift picked out by a dedicated shopper who knows a specific category of products very well.

As a gift-giver, you don’t know what your recipient will get until they do. All you know is which gift tier you paid for on the site, with prices currently ranging from $35 for the entry-level package to $500 for the “Black” tier. The fee covers the cost of the gift, curation, tax, and shipping, with higher prices mostly going to higher-end presents.

Spoil co-founder Cristian Asenjo compares using the service to getting someone a gift card. You know how much you’re putting on the card, and you know roughly where they’d like to spend that much money, but you’re not picking out the exact gift they’ll receive.

If you head over to Spoil’s site, their entire home page is the interface for sending a gift. You give the high-level reason for sending a gift (“I love you” or “Thank you,” for example), the recipient’s gender, their interests, and where the gift will go. It’s all one screen, with very little manual text entry — perfect for the eventual jump to mobile.

So far, the team has processed 500 gift deliveries since launching four months ago with fewer than 10 returns. The team currently has just six curators processing orders, though they’re currently doing trials with several more so that they can find better gifts in more categories.

Co-founder Charles-Eric Gascon says the team expects Valentine’s Day to be huge for Spoil, with approximately 70 percent of gifts already processed having been between couples. The most popular gift tiers in the United States (Spoil can ship to the US and Canada) are the $50-$100 brackets, though Spoil would like to move up-market with even higher-end packages as they gain traction.