Valentine's Day Gift-Giving: Survey Shows Room for Improvement

    LITTLETON, CO, February 04, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Gift Toad surveyed its Facebook followers asking them to describe the best or worst Valentine's Day gift they had ever received. The results were surprising; some of the answers were heartwarming and others were downright sad. Several individuals shared beautiful stories about Valentine's Day proposals, babies being born on Valentine's Day, and hand-made gifts they had received. Others, however, shared heartbreaking stories from the love-inspired holiday.

Here are four of the worst:

"My ex bought himself a game for his Xbox and I got nothing."

"I received an engraved locket with my boyfriend's initials and his ex's (initials)."

"My boyfriend waited until the last minute. The store only had kid Valentines left. I received a SpongeBob Valentine with a broken lollipop attached."

"(I received) weight loss pills and a scale."

As a result of hearing stories like these and after surviving a few of his own gift-giving debacles, Chip Brunk, a former investment banker and educational toy company president, founded an online gift service. "Gift Toad is designed for men like me who hate shopping and who find the gift-giving process to be taxing," says Brunk. "I once gave my wife a vacuum cleaner because I thought she would appreciate the self-propel feature. It turns out she thought I was telling her that she needed to clean more. After that experience, I found it stressful trying to find appropriate gifts knowing that what I gave her meant more to her than I ever realized."

Many people find their stress levels increasing as major gift-giving occasions like Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas draw near. Oftentimes they are unsure about what type of gift to buy and end up putting off their shopping until the last minute. "Our goal is to alleviate the stress that comes with preparing for an upcoming gift-giving occasion by making it easy for our users to find appropriate gifts," says Brenda Staab, Editor-in-Chief at Gift Toad. "Our team of editors sorts through millions of products and selects only the most appealing gift items; it makes the shopping process essentially fail-proof for the user because there are no bad gifts on the site."

Gift Toad's team of editors also provides tips for gift-giving as well as romantic scores on certain items like jewelry and flowers. The romantic score helps customers find suitable gifts for the more romantic occasions such as Valentine's Day and anniversaries.

Relationship experts agree that gift-giving can be an important ingredient in a romantic relationship. And some individuals place more value on giving and receiving gifts than others do. Says Staab, "I know a lot of people who end up picking out their own gifts, which can take away from the romantic aspect of a special occasion. Shopping for gifts doesn't have to be difficult or stressful, and gift-giving can be fun and rewarding for both the giver and the receiver."

With Valentine's Day on the horizon, now may a good time to begin thinking about shopping in order to avoid having to deliver a cartoon Valentine with a broken lollipop.

To learn more about the company, visit http://www.GiftToad.com.

Gift Toad is an online gift site designed to alleviate shopping stress by doing the heavy lifting for customers. Millions of products are streamed into the site via data feed from the site's partner retailers, including popular sites such as Amazon and niche retailers such as Cloud 9 Living. The Gift Toad team then chooses the products that are gift-appropriate. From there, the site's editors further narrow down the product mix to feature only the most appealing gifts. Gift Toad users can search for gifts by category of interest, desired price range and occasion, and can also perform more advanced searches based on gift popularity and romantic score. Gift Toad's team of editors provide helpful comments on select items as well as gift-giving advice. Other unique site features include a tool for users to record important gift-giving dates and a tool for them to request feedback and comments about potential gifts from the recipient's friends and family members without the recipient knowing.

# # #