About Gift Posse
Our story starts back in 2007.
My family has always been strong on gift giving and celebrating both birthdays and holidays together. We particularly love celebrating Christmas. With a sister whose birthday falls in early December, we had a rule that everyone needed to have their wish list ready to share no later than the day that we gathered to celebrate her birthday.
Everyone would start writing their lists, creating enough copies to provide one to every family member. Back then, technology wasn't what it is today. Smartphones were just arriving, and at least one family member still thought that the fax machine was the greatest invention ever. 😊 We ended up with a mishmash of handwritten, emailed, and photocopied lists.
Then we were off to the races, frantically making purchases. Followed by calling and emailing everyone else to say "scratch such and such off of so and so's list", making great effort to ensure that you didn't inadvertently ruin any surprises by accidentally informing anyone what you were getting for them.
Things often ended in frustration, with multiple people purchasing the same gift before getting in touch with everyone. Woe be to anyone who started shopping late. They got the wishes that were either hard to find, out of stock, or generally not the kind of gift that they wanted to give.
That Christmas, an idea came to me; what if I built a website where you could publish a list of wish ideas that you wanted, and people could choose from that list?
You could create your list in advance, and have plenty of ideas on hand when it came time for your birthday, Mother's Day/Father's Day, Christmas, or whatever festive holiday that you and your family or friends celebrated. Wishes could be reserved before being purchased, ensuring that duplicates would become a thing of the past.
As a software engineer, I knew that I could build it. After tossing the idea around with a couple of friends, we decided to work together to refine the idea. It would be a web-based solution that people could access from anywhere, via their computers or their phones.
And that's how Gift Posse was born.
If you can relate even a little bit to any of this, then Gift Posse is for you!
