Giftventure Makes Gift Giving an Adventure
Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:20PM EST
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Amid the latest and coolest gadgets at this year's CES was a new web enterprise for kids that makes use of a quaint, retro thing: mail.
Steve Mock was at the mega trade show to spread the word on Giftventure.com, the online/offline gift adventure business he started to help parents and relatives surprise kids. For $15 Giftventure doesn't buy the gift for you, but it makes giving the gift a bigger event.
Here's how it works: You buy a gift for a child, hide it, then choose one of the mythical figures offered by Giftventure to help you carry out a kind of scavenger hunt. Your child receives letters from a pirate, a fairy princess, or a dragon (the friendly variety). With the help of a few details from you, the letter is personalized and helps the child embark on an adventure to solve a mystery that will lead to your gift.
Mock says he started the business at the urging of friends and family who told him others would want to pay for the kinds of adventures and mysteries he created when giving gifts to his nieces. He planned to send one letter, which would lead to an online adventure, but parents said the kids really liked getting letters. What do you know?
"In our original trials, we had the letters lead to a web site where an online adventure would continue," Mock said. "However, many of the parents commented that getting the entire experience offline had a much more powerful impact on the children." They also liked that it was one thing not on the computer, one less web site to monitor.
So Giftventure is off and running. There's a February Cupid theme featured on the site now.
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2 Posted by simplycin702 on Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:50PM EST Report Abuse
My Kids are grown now - but i'll never forget the parties one of my friends would have for her daughter, my daughter's friend. I could not just drop my daughter off - I had to stay becuase Charlotte, the Mom, did the most wonderful, imaginative things: like a treasure hunt in the house with clues hidden in the house - the kids loved it - I loved it. I was always in awe of Charlotte - who knew how to do the unusual. I love watching the kids figure out the clues. And now, those treasured memories, the unusual, are here again in the form of Giftventrue. My sister has 3 kids: 9, 10 and 11. We sent Dixie, the youngest, a Giftventure for her birthday - she is still trying to figure out how the gift got in the tree house -after all she was in it the night before and she knows I'm 5 hours from her! So then we sent the Christmas package to all 3 kids - the loved it - they were fighting over the second letter - they were in deep discussion as to solving the puzzles - and the correct placement at the window for Santa to see. In the end, cash in the Baja Bug - made the cash to each more than the face value! The kids loved getting the mail - As for me, i'm, going to make this a tradition each birthday and each Christmas until they leave for college!
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3 Posted by angelick77 on Tue Jan 15, 2008 10:41AM EST Report Abuse
I don't have any kids, but I did send one of the products (The Scrambler's Maze) from this site to a friend of mine from work as a gag gift. She's one of those artistic types who loves novelty items, and she was completely tickled by the idea of receiving letters from a fairy princess! I didn't tell her it was from me at first, so when she got the first letter, she showed it to me and told me that she suspected that she might have a secret admirer. It was too funny listening to her try to figure out where these letters were coming from! I also hid the gift, (a birthday card revealing that the whole adventure was from me), in the office, so it proved to be a nice, low-key distraction from the hum-drum workday. Now she's talking about getting one for her boyfriend for his birthday and she's been passing the word along about this site to HER friends who do have kids. I know it's geared for children, but it's such a new, innovative idea that even adults, (especially that one kooky friend we all have), seems to enjoy the suspension of disbelief involved in getting letters from fantasy characters.
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4 Posted by stevelinton2006 on Wed Jan 16, 2008 2:29PM EST Report Abuse
What gifts does Giftventure provide?
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5 Posted by cynthia127 on Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:32PM EST Report Abuse
Giftventure provides personalized letters & puzzles which leads to the mystery of a hidden present (you choose the secret location). The fun is having them get actual mail (my daughter doesn't get too much but I never realized how much kids LOVE getting mail!); and she also LOVED figuring out the mystery puzzles and mazes. The characters are fun too - we chose Santa Claus - but they have a fairy, a dragon, a pirate, etc. For my daughter's Santa Claus giftventure, we bought her a doll and put it underneath her bathroom sink - we had to be REALLY sneaky - so she didn't figure it out. When the last letter and puzzle came to her in the mail - she figured out a secret coded map which lead her to her gift. I can just tell you that after she finished the activity, she was running very FAST downstairs to her bathroom! It was really cool to see her amazement - she kept saying that Santa was REAL and he was a friend of hers. She also wrote letters back to Santa - WAY cool. I'm all for anything that gets kids writing and using their problem-solving skills!
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1 Posted by cynthia127 on Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:44PM EST Report Abuse
I got my daughter Samantha (she’s six) a late Christmas Giftventure from Santa Claus - it focused on doing "good deeds" - perfect for my little one. She needs to do more "helping" around the house! lol It's really cool how they customize the letters and games around her interests. This is really helpful for me - I just don't have the time to stand in those long shopping lines to buy something while being a full-time working mom, nor would I ever have the time to personalize something like this. Samantha says that Santa is "real" and that she wishes other kids in her class would get letters from him too. I think this is really educational too - it gets her away from her video games and TV screen and actually gets her reading & writing! She loves getting mail (she always tells me she never gets any mail - even though Grandma sends her cards once and a while:) For us, it turned out to be a really fun & alternative gift idea to the traditional presents under the tree - kindof brought me back to my childhood when my grandparents would make giftgiving a lot of fun!