By Kaitlin Candelaria
Gift cards are taking on a new look this holiday season thanks to Instagift, a Birmingham-based business founded on the premise of buying and selling egift cards and mobile gift cards on the internet.
Instagift is housed in Innovation Depot in downtown Birmingham. It serves more than 1,000 clients across the country with a heavy emphasis on the Birmingham area.
Sales Director Brooke Gillis said the idea for Instagift was born after CEO Nate Schmidt noticed a trend. Local businesses would get hit up for donations for local events constantly, but people would buy Amazon gift cards when it came time to exchange gifts.
“We want to focus on how to keep our money local,” Gillis said. “The biggest thing is that we really focus on local businesses and buying local.”
About 80 of their clients are based in the Birmingham community, she said. The gift “cards” may be for individual merchants or groups of merchants. Gift givers can email them to recipients or print a receipt to give them, and cardholders can manage and redeem their cards from an Instagift app on their phones.
Instagift’s latest innovation is gift cards aimed toward the Crestline and Homewood communities.
“We launched the Crestline card at the end of October and sold $10,000 within the first week,” she said. “We love Crestline and we have a lot of great clients there. It’s been an easy card to launch because people are very loyal to them.”
Businesses in Crestline that accept the gift cards include Basil Gourmet Pizza and Bar, Bongiomo, Catherine Pittman Smith Photography, Crestline Bagel Company, Dish’n It Out, Elle, Gus’s Hot Dogs, La Paz, Mafiozas, Mountain Brook Sporting Goods, Neighborhood Hops and Vine, Otey’s, Smart Skin Day Spa, Sugar, Surin of Thailand, Taco Mama, The Pantry, The Pants Store, Tracy’s and Urban Cookhouse.
“They hold value just like a plastic card,” she said. “For example, one may choose to eat lunch at La Paz and then go shop at the Pants Store all on the same card. We strongly believe in shopping and dining local and we look forward to our group gift cards making a huge impact in Birmingham. They make great gifts for everyone on your list this holiday season.”
Also recently launched is the Homewood card, which includes more than 40 redemption locations, including Dream Cakes, Homewood Toy and Hobby, Homewood Sporting Goods, Jackson’s, Trak Shak and Homewood Gourmet.
“We worked on getting a mix of retail and dining so that it can cater to a lot of different people,” Gillis said.
Because of the success of the two cards thus far, Gillis said customers can expect to see group gift cards for Mountain Brook, Mountain Brook Village and English Village in 2016. Instagift also will be running many holiday promotions during the month of December, all of which will be posted on its website.
For more information on Instagift or to purchase a card, visit www.bhamgiftcards.com
