We are the world's first universal gift registry that guarantees the perfect gift every time, on time, without wasting time! We believe our users shouldn't have to stress about what to buy for their loved ones or when to buy it - that's where we come in.
Picture this: you've just woken up and are enjoying a leisurely start to your day. You stop at your favorite breakfast restaurant and are lovingly sipping your morning coffee when you suddenly realize - TODAY IS MOTHER'S DAY AND YOU DIDN'T GET A GIFT! Or maybe you're not like the 1 in 6 Americans who actually admit to forgetting this occasion... maybe you've procrastinated an anniversary/Valentine's Day/important birthday and are experiencing the last-minute overwhelm of trying to find a present that will show your loved one just how appreciated they are! We've all been there, but why is it that nobody has addressed this issue yet?! Mag[i] is a mobile application that takes the guessing out of gifting, and the stress out of what should be a beautiful memory.
The IssuesOur market research indicates that there are 3 major issues gifters experience leading up to (and during) every major holiday or special life event:
1) Gift-Giving Anxiety - In 2014, Psychology Today released an article which coined the phrase. Since then, the term has been widely recognized worldwide in relation to feelings of inadequacy, increased stress, fear of embarrassment or judgment, and time-consumption associated with the gifting process. These emotions retract greatly from what should otherwise be a cherished memory with family & friends.
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/presence-mind/201412/gift-giving-anxiety)
2) Gift-Receiving Frustrations - Fortune approximates that 34% of Americans return holiday gifts before the end of January each year, and that number has been slowly rising. While gift-giving may generate a lot of anxious emotions for the purchaser, receiving sub-optimal gifts can negatively impact the recipient as well. Not only is it disappointing to receive a gift that doesn’t meet expectations, but there is the awkward interaction involved, the hassle/time spent on returning the gift, or the need to hold onto a sub-par gift and create clutter to maintain impressions with the gift giver. This may be a very first-world problem, but the inconvenience remains.
(https://fortune.com/2019/01/07/americans-holiday-gift-returns/)
3) Forgotten/Procrastinated Special Occasions - The NY Post approximates that 35% of people forget their significant other’s birthdays each year. Inexorably linked to the gifting process are the mental stressors of remembering, tracking, and preparing for special occasions (such as birthdays, anniversaries, Mother’s Day, etc.). Procrastinating these important occasions risks making friends and family feel undervalued or forgotten altogether – relying on our memory to circumvent this takes an energetic toll in our every-day lives. While we may not actively realize it, remembering all of these events for the people we care about can cause mental fatigue over the long-term, and risks making our loved ones feel undervalued or forgotten in the short-term.
(https://nypost.com/2018/07/27/men-really-do-suck-at-remembering-their-partners-birthday/)
The Solution
The first mobile application/universal registry that guarantees the perfect gift every time, the perfect gift on time, and the perfect gift without wasting time. By addressing the 3 major issues plaguing the gifting industry today, we can ensure that our users and the recipients of their gifts get to focus on enjoying the moments most worth celebrating to them, while we handle the logistics of the schedule management & gift idea generation process. As for how it works, we'd like to protect our PI until more direct discussions with motivated investors. Given our high level of differentiation and unique functionality compared to competitors in the gifting space, we'd prefer not to show all of our cards right away! An idea this game-changing needs to be protected!
The Market
The gifting industry is a multi-trillion dollar global entity. Domestically, nearly 250 billion dollars are spent on Christmas and birthdays alone, each year. That's excluding major spending holidays such as Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, and other major life events like graduations, baby showers, etc. Additionally, in recent years, the E-Commerce space has been growing rapidly. By the end of 2022, it is expected that U.S. remote sales will have doubled since 2019, reaching over 1.15 trillion dollars! This, combined with the fact that annual retail returns are approximately 500 billion dollars, demonstrates a growing need. As more purchases are made remotely, consumers are craving confidence in the goods/gifts they choose! The market is massive and the competitive landscape leads much to be desired by potential users! For us, this presents a uniquely promising opportunity for market-fit and mass adoption.
Monetization/Business Model
Mag[i] will generate revenue primarily through Cost Per Acquisition Affiliate Marketing. Essentially, this means that for every purchase made through our app, we receive a portion of the purchase price. The average American (age 25+) spends approximately $600 on gifts during Christmas & $50 on birthday gifts for family/close friends. Assuming we can achieve 100,000 users who purchase 50% of their yearly (Christmas & birthday) gifts through the app, with the average commission rate for our CPA Affiliates being ~3.5%, we would generate $1.75 million. When we increase the % of gifts purchase through Mag[i] or reach an even wider audience, that number climbs rapidly. On top of this revenue generator, Mag[i] will also present an opportunity for profitability via sponsored vendors/products, & gift crowdfunding commissions. Although the figures these channels generate are much smaller than those made through affiliate marketing, they add comfortably to the passive revenue our application will create.
Market Adoption
Our market adoption strategy consists of 3 aspects:
1) Promote heavily around the holidays. Pump marketing budget into publishing ads in the month before (and during) major holidays. Focus particularly on targeting audience with birthdays or anniversaries in the next 60 days.
2) Utilize college brand ambassador networks. College students are motivated first adopters, since they like to be early on social trends, are geographically distant from their families, and are not generating income yet. This makes them ideal users for this application, since they will be motivated to share with their families to receive gifts, simplify tracking of their family/friend’s birthday schedules, and are in a setting that facilitates sharing.
3) Incentivize users to help contribute to the intrinsic exponential momentum of the application. Mag[i] is an app that works best when the user has several close friends or family to participate with. This means that any users who went through the trouble of downloading the app will likely be motivated to at least share it with their nuclear family and closest friends. By financially incentivizing users in the first 48 hours of download (consumer scarcity mentality facilitates action) to share with 10+ contacts, we can synergize with the innate scalability of the product and increase our adoption rate.
We can conservatively expect that our initial users are motivated enough to share the app with at least 5 of their closest family/friends (Mom, Dad, Sibling 1, Friend 1, Friend 2) to achieve basic functionality. Once these new users begin using the app, given the financial incentive referenced above and the intrinsic requirement of several contacts needed for users to achieve functionality, we can expect each of the Generation 2 users to share with 5 more people. If we can facilitate this interaction through Generation 4, we will hit our 150,000 user goal with just 1000 initial users.
Progress/Proof of Concept
Over 22,000 responses were received in our company's logo design contest. 10,000+ of those individuals stated that they suffer from at least one of the 3 pain points (gift-giving anxiety, gift receiving frustrations, or procrastination of special occasions) our business addresses, and would be interested in an app that could help with those issues. Less than 60 of those 10,000+ currently use a "gifting app." With 500+ current subscribers (before even having an MVP on the market), the user research has been conducted and the proof of concept is there.
Where Are We Currently?
Currently, Mag[i] has a working clickable prototype which was designed by a UI/UX professional. We are an incorporated LLC in the state of Delaware, although our Executive Team is based out of Boulder, CO. As stated above, we have a logo & app icon that was voted on from over 22,000 responses, and are increasing our subscriber base of 500+ on a daily basis, even before the MVP is available. Now, all we need is the capital to make our MVP a reality and GET TO MARKET!
Objectives/Future
We are raising $150,000 total in angel investment in order to hire a development firm to build our MVP mobile application. With this funding, we can secure a world-class dev team and work with them to bring our clickable prototype into the native application environment. If we can secure funding soon, it is possible to get our app released in advance of the holiday season, which would greatly increase the momentum of our initial user adoption rates. Once released, we can begin working on bug fixes as beta-testing of our MVP is underway. We will use the remaining ~$60,000 to set up back-end infrastructure that will ensure our scalability and network security, as well as funding our marketing budget. The key to phenomenal success here is continuous strategic marketing and the early initiation of sales/usage data that will support our A-Series funding round.