Published on: March 23, 2024
In a recent interview with SafetyDetectives, Archer Chiang, the founder and CEO of Giftpack, shared the inspiring journey behind the inception of his company and its innovative approach to gifting. With a background deeply rooted in technology and a personal challenge that sparked the idea, Chiang leveraged artificial intelligence to revolutionize the way we think about gift-giving. What started as a quest to find the perfect gift for his girlfriend evolved into a global enterprise, helping major companies deliver personalized gifts across 220 countries. Through Giftpack, Chiang not only addresses the practical challenges of corporate gifting but also enhances the emotional value of each gift, ensuring that technology augments rather than replaces the human touch in these warm exchanges.
Can you talk about your background and what led you to founding Giftpack?
I have always been fascinated by technology’s ability to solve day-to-day problems for people. Giftpack was a labor of love actually – I first had the idea for a similar product while I was in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend.
I was struggling to find gifts for her that she liked and found useful, so instead of quitting or continuing to buy bad gifts, I decided to leverage AI to assist me in my selection process. I designed a simple, 2-minute quiz for my girlfriend to take that would create a “personality profile” based on her interests, tastes, and preferences. I programmed an AI algorithm to analyze the internet, look for gifts aligned with her interests, filter by my desired budget, and propose the best options. She loved the options presented or at least the idea of doing this for her. Then she chose a gift that she enjoyed the most!
The quiz worked well enough, leading me to realize there was potential to bring this concept to scale through corporate gifting, and Giftpack was born. Now, we help companies like Meta, Google, J.P. Morgan, and over 1,400 other companies send highly personalized gifts to employees and clients in over 220 countries. This saves teams time and money on tedious and time-consuming tasks.
How does Giftpack leverage AI to revolutionize the gifting experience?
This wouldn’t have been possible without AI. The algorithm built for my girlfriend and improved for Giftpack scours various e-commerce sites and marketplaces to instantly select gifts all based on the intended recipient and within budget. By fully automating the processes through AI, tedious, costly, and time-consuming tasks like global onboarding, employee recognition, client retention, and sales enablement become easier to achieve at scale.
We’ve incorporated advanced AI algorithms for personalized gift recommendations, improved user interfaces, and enhanced automation capabilities to make the gifting process more efficient and tailored to individual preferences. Our AI is also incorporated into the visual engine that can be used as a real-textured mockup to bridge the gap between client demands and manufacturing. This makes it easier to produce quality branded swag.
How does Giftpack balance the use of technology with the preservation of human emotion in gifting?
Technology can preserve – and even enhance – the human emotion tied to gifting. Through Giftpack, gift givers can be sure their gift will be received as a sincere gesture. Scientifically, receiving a good gift releases dopamine, creating positive sentiment between coworkers. The better the gift, the stronger the reaction, and our technology delivers positive gifting experiences to people around the world.
Employers often are concerned that their team will react negatively to a bad gift – generic swag like one-sized hoodies or heavy water bottles not everyone wants to carry can create friction. Giving bad gifts can alienate your team, and managers worry they may be investing all this time and money into gifts that will not resonate well with their team, exacerbating the very issue they wanted to fix. Our AI removes this concern entirely, allowing companies to engage in team-building practices like gift-giving with confidence while overcoming complex hurdles in the process.
Can you explain the process of analyzing an individual’s digital footprint for gift recommendations?
We always ask for permission before using any data. However, we significantly improved our personality quiz and AI so that gift suggestions rely more on the information received from the quiz and what’s available than a person’s digital footprint.
How do you foresee the future of AI in enhancing human experiences like gifting?
AI will play a major role in corporate strategies to increase humanity in workplace experiences. Overall, companies are heavily focused on finding the right technology solutions that address the needs of their team while providing stability to the remote/hybrid workplace. Employees clearly prefer the flexibility to work from home even though too much isolation contributes to burnout or churn. In gifting and in other use cases, AI will play a large role in creating meaningful interactions in the day-to-day working experiences that are necessary to build strong teams and a positive workplace culture.
What has been the most challenging aspect of building Giftpack?
The most challenging part of building Giftpack has been knowing what aspects of the business I need to let go of and delegate to someone else, and which aspects need my full attention. The biggest mistake I’ve made is thinking that I can do everything, when the reality is I have certain strengths and only so much time in a day. One example of this is sales – I thought I could handle building, scaling, marketing, and selling Giftpack when I first started. Failure to build a better sales strategy cost me in the beginning, and ultimately, I had to hire someone to take care of sales.