Business Edge News Magazine – businessedge.ca – Ontario Edition – Online gift shop turns scowls into smiles

Boffo concept frees men from doghouse

By Terry Poulton – Business Edge
Published: 10/13/2005 – Vol. 5, No. 35

If Sigmund Freud could somehow meet Teresa Mitrovich, he’d finally get the answer to his famous question: What do women want?

The answer, says the Mississauga native, is that women want a lot of things, especially for their birthdays, anniversaries and other special days. But too many of the men in their lives seem to be as clueless as Dr. Freud about what those things are.

That’s why Mitrovich founded Gifts For Your Wife early this year. She says her Internet-based business helps men put smiles rather than scowls on the faces of the wives and other women for whom they choose gifts.

The inspiration for launching her company, she says, was that she had heard “so many funny stories about men ending up in the doghouse for bringing home awful gifts. So, when I was ready to start a business of my own – after considering a lot of other ideas – I decided to help close the gap between what men believe women want (as gifts) and the kinds of things women actually do like to receive.”

During her seven-year career as a professional social worker with a specialty in serving special-needs children, Mitrovich says she had dreamed of one day owning her own business. So when she became pregnant with her son, who is now 18 months old, she realized the time was right to get serious about founding a company she could run from home.

So she and husband Jonathan Mitrovich, vice’-president of Mississauga market research company Proforma Consulting, put their heads together to come up with a boffo business concept.

Central to their planning, says Teresa, was encouraging data about the growing popularity of online retailing. According to a 2004 Statistics Canada survey, some 3.2 million Canadian households had spent more than $3 billion on Internet purchases during the previous year. That information, she says, provided the green light to proceed.

But Jonathan remembers things a little differently. Yes, empirical data about the viability of an online business were important to his wife’s decision to launch Gifts For Your Wife. But he believes an error in judgment on his own part may have influenced her almost as much.

“She wasn’t exactly happy when I gave her a sewing machine for her birthday one year,” he says. “She’d been talking about wanting to sew her own curtains and pillows as a hobby. So just kind of thinking logically … I figured a sewing machine would be something she’d like to get as a present.”

Wrong, says Teresa with a forgiving chortle. “I never had any interest in sewing. In fact, I’m awful at it.”

So the sewing machine is now stowed in a storage closet with a collection of other gifts that went awry.

The sort of miscommunication that produced the sewing-machine fiasco was rife among the 200 men and 200 women Mitrovich had professionally surveyed as part of her market research before launching her company.

“I knew I wanted to start out small and not make mistakes on the inventory side, so that’s why, with Jonathan’s help, I asked so many people their opinions about gift giving.”

The responses were as revealing as they were amusing, and, says Mitrovich, “they definitely convinced me that I could be of help.”

Topping many men’s lists were flowers, perfume and lingerie. But female respondents said “no way” to all those items and expressed a particular dislike for receiving racy lingerie. Instead, the women favoured home décor items, spa packages and things that complemented their hobbies and other interests.

Chocolate was one of the few items both genders agreed upon, which is why Mitrovich put it high on her shopping list when she began visiting wholesalers – around Ontario in person and throughout Canada online. “I knew that finding good suppliers and working out arrangements that would give me a profit margin was critical,” she says.

Total capitalization for Gifts For Your Wife amounted to about $15,000, an amount its owner expects to more than recoup during the upcoming holiday season, if not before.

After finding the right suppliers, Mitrovich instructed her website designer to complete the art for an appealing variety of gifts. These include a boxed assortment of chocolate treats at $60, home décor objects such as an antique clock at $66, a basket of gardening items at $150, a crystal pendant and chain for $105 and a spa package for $175.

While all these prices are in Canadian dollars, Gifts For Your Wife actually does about 60 per cent of its business among American customers, which Mitrovich says she attracts not with advertising, which is still too pricey for her budget, but through listing “tons and tons of keywords” on Internet search engines.

Mitrovich modifies her inventory to suit topical occasions such as Valentine’s Day and says that she is deliberately keeping prices fairly modest for the moment. “But down the road, I plan to offer more premium items, possibly things like diamond earrings.”

But regardless of what may be on offer in the future, she says that none of her gift suggestions will commit the most egregious error cited by female participants in her survey. The worst-received presents of all, they stated, are those that can be interpreted as implied criticism. “Loud and clear,” says Mitrovich, “women told us they do not appreciate being given things like exercise machines or gym memberships or cleaning gadgets.”

But combating insensitivity of that sort is not the only reason to check out GiftsForYourWife.com, says Mario Lollino. The senior consultant with a Toronto-based software company discovered Mitrovich’s website while doing an Internet search in anticipation of his wife’s recent birthday.

He says he sought online help for two reasons that he believes he shares with many other men. One was “that I may have picked out clothes and perfume that she never wears because they weren’t quite her style.”

The other was a hectic work schedule.

“I’m on the road a lot for business and have so little time left over that I always take care of things like banking and paying bills online. So shopping electronically also makes a lot of sense.”

Mitrovich’s site offered Lollino what he calls “an array of interesting gift ideas where I was able to relate to something specific that my wife would like.”

He ended up choosing a robe and spa package for his wife. “I was sure it would be a hit because she loves baths and I was right.”

But busy work schedules aren’t the only reason men are in need of the service Mitrovich provides, says Lollino, who is already planning to use GiftsForYourWife.com again this Christmas.

“I think men lack confidence and there are too many choices out there, so they get overwhelmed about what to pick. Also, wives tend to be quite picky,” he says, adding that his best advice to his fellow men is to “know what your wife enjoys …

so you can send her the message that you understand what makes her happy.”

Mitrovich concurs. “The best gifts are the ones that show that men really know the women in their lives and have thought about what they like,” she says. “Maybe it’s something extravagant, maybe it’s not. And an element of surprise never hurts.”

In the event that such logical advice does not suffice, Mitrovich’s home page prominently displays a box for use by women. It says: “Email my husband to give him a hint … ” As for her company’s future, Mitrovich says she has already reserved two additional domain names: GiftsForYourBaby.com and GiftsForYourPet.com.

(Terry Poulton can be reached at poulton@businessedge.ca)

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