I share a birthday with a close lifelong friend. As our common date approached this year, I was once again stuck trying to figure out a creative and useful gift for him. Of course, I ran out of time and ended up on Amazon ordering him a gift card. I felt about two inches tall when I received his present to me, but it also permanently solved the conundrum of selecting unique gifts.

His gift came to me in a beautifully embossed package from a company called Wantful. Inside was a custom printed book offering me sixteen personalized gift choices from which to choose. I was amazed that all of the options seemed like exactly the kind of things I would enjoy, but were also items that I hadn’t seem in large commercial stores. I made my selection online and days later the physical gift arrived. It was actually like getting two gifts, as the original book with all the options was so thoughtful and well put together.

After being on the receiving end of the Wantful process, I immediately signed on to test it out from the giving end. It’s free and simple to signup for an account. Once logged in, you can enter who you’re shopping for or a specific occasion. You’re then taken through an interactive set of questions that help to assess what types of gifts would be most appealing — this is actually an enjoyable process, not a set of 50 boring multiple choice questions that take all day to answer. Once complete, Wantful suggests the group of sixteen unique gifts that will be sent, or you can hand select them yourself. Another useful feature is a sliding bar that allows to you select various pricing levels, making it easy to winnow down the choices if you have a specific budget. After you’ve selected the pricing level and gift options, you finish off the personalization aspects of the gift and complete the order.

If you’re looking to combine efficiency with thoughtful and unique gift giving, Wantful is more than worth a go!