What makes a gift store a gift store?
Similarly what makes a gift a gift?
For four years I have had to continually answer “What is Amé Amé?” And it has always been difficult to answer. Two years ago on the business cards I put “Travel, Weather and Gift Needs.”
The gift part was to explain all the little things we had in the store, like candles and jewelry.
But then this season I started to think about all the people who have enjoyed Amé Amé and what has been the common experience through 16 different seasons (ie 4 falls, 4 winters, 4 springs, and 4 summers).
I began to realize that in almost every shopping occasion people were doing gift buying.
Even when they were buying umbrellas and other rain gear necessities for themselves, they were gift buying. Our stylish rain coats and our quality windproof umbrellas aren’t t cheap and so when people are buying for themselves at Ame Ame they really go through the process of “Do I buy this gift for myself or not.”
And it really surprised me starting in our first holiday season how many men came to Amé Amé to buy for their wives or their girlfriends a pair of rain boots and how many women as well as men bought for their sweetheart’s a coat as a gift.
And it all now makes sense. At least it’s starting to.
But of course now that I say “Ame Ame is a gift store.” People will probably still say something “What kind of a gift store?”
And you and I can hopefully just say “A gift store for men and for women, where the experience of shopping for the gift is an adventure and the gift is never forgotten.”
Adventure & Celebrate,
Teresa Alexandra
