It‘s Christmas time! Everyone is in gifting mode. But with this year’s Black Friday being one of the biggest shopping letdowns ever, a lot of people are left wondering what to get someone after the retailers didn’t come through last week. Why not reach into the heart of the season and give back a little by purchasing gifts for your loved ones from the artists or entrepreneurs you know? It’s very easy to find something for everyone when you go down the rabbit hole of options in your personalized community.
Its hard to break the cycle of showing up to Target and buying eight DVDs for $24.00 just because it was a great deal. Then repeating that process as a template in every department or every story you go to, over and over and over. What a soul sucking approach to searching for a gift that should hopefully represent your love and appreciation for that person. You can start to break that cycle by writing down a list of all the people you want to give a gift to and then, next to their name, write down 2-3 things that they like. For every artist that you know that makes music, paints, dances, creates or performs in anyway, buy something from them and gift it to another artist on your list. There is a lot to pick from when you start to go down that list. You can get hoodies, hats, beanies, t-shirts, performance tickets, stickers, and a multitude of gift cards for services like music production, dance lessons, vocal lessons, consultation services and so much more. Don’t be afraid to keep a couple of tickets or merch items for yourself of course. This is a great way to support the artists you know while offering a way to give the artists in your life a piece of someone else’s art.
For the rest of the people on your list you need to alter your approach. Do a search on Instagram. Go over to the places tab and type in a hashtags that would correlate to the things they like. There you go, now you have a list of places you can check locally that deal with those products or services. You will get massage studios if the person you want to gift for loves self-care and beauty and you search #massage. If you type in #tattoo then you will get a great list of local tattoo shops to grab some gift cards from for those ink lovers on your list.
This year give back even more by shopping locally. I think this will end up being my plan A from now on, Black Friday deals from the artists and entrepreneurs you know are probably really good. Let’s get on that next year. Merry Christmas and happy shopping everyone.
by: Steven Sandage
Comments