The big business of gift guides
Gifts for your sister, your boss, your spouse, your father-in-law, your neighbor. You name it, there’s a gift guide for it, because as Jessica Roy wrote for The New York Times, the world of gift guides has expanded exponentially into a moneymaking proposition of its own.
“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Roy about her piece about the business behind gift guides and what makes a good one. Roy is author of the upcoming book “American Girls: One Woman’s Journey Into the Islamic State and Her Sister’s Fight to Bring Her Home.”
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: So it’s not just me, right? This whole gift guide thing has gone just haywire the past couple of years.
Jessica Roy: Yes, it seems like gift guides are out of control. In fact, if you Google “gift guides,” you’re going to come up with 255 million results just in English.
Ryssdal: Look, if everybody’s doing a gift guide, is anybody doing a gift guide? That is to say, it’s almost too many choices.
Roy: It is a lot of choices. But I think when it comes to gift guides, there are a few ways to figure out what makes a good one, and that can help you figure out who is making the best gift guides. I think what you really want to do is highlight some of the big-ticket items that people are talking about that don’t always go on sale. So for example, a lot of women this year are wanting the Dyson Airwrap. That doesn’t normally go on sale, but occasionally it’ll go on sale around the holidays. And then you’re also going to want to think about what the person that you’re giving the gift to would really want, what will be something that’s meaningful to them? And what is the gift that you could give them that would say something not just about that person, but also about your friendship? So I think thinking about it in those two ways, one, what are the things that are going to be on sale and that you can get a good deal on? And then, what are the things that are going to be really meaningful to the other person?
Ryssdal: It’s work for companies and individuals and, and magazines. Putting these together is a business proposition.
Roy: Yes, it really is a business in and of itself. And with the sort of media landscape challenged a lot by declining ad revenue and a loss of print subscribers, there’s a big chance for people to sort of seek out alternative revenue streams. And a lot of people are doing that with affiliate marketing. So you’re seeing a huge growth in e-commerce articles that are showing up on legacy media brands’ sites. And gift guides pegged to holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah or Mothers Day, for example, are big business for people who are doing online shopping and searching specifically for recommendations from people who are, you know, leaders in this space, whether that’s the editors of women’s magazines when it comes to fashion or that kind of thing.
Ryssdal: And also, I should say, not that I know this firsthand, but there are producers in this shop who tell me that Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop is a biggie.
Roy: Yes, she is probably the biggest and most fun gift guide that is published every year that rounds up some of the most spectacularly un-useful but amazing luxury products. The one for this year includes a weeklong blimp ride to the North Pole. And then another thing she suggested was a $400 hunk of Parmesan cheese. So these are things that are really only for people in a certain tax bracket. But for those of us who can’t afford them, they’re fun to just think about.
Ryssdal: I was just gonna say there’s a little bit of voyeurism here, right?
Roy: Totally. It’s sort of like materialism make-believe. It’s sort of like the e-commerce equivalent of watching a reality TV show. You feel like you have this healthy dose of, like, shock and horror at how the other half does the holidays.
Ryssdal: OK, so brass tacks here. What’s your go-to gift guide if I wanted to, like, actually find some good stuff and you were telling me where to go?
Roy: I have two. I think Wirecutter from The New York Times is really good. And I think The Strategist from New York magazine has some incredible gift guides. So those would be my two recs.
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