Gift Basket Business

The shortcut: Skip retail-only. Land 3-5 small companies as repeat corporate gifting clients. One 50-basket order pays better than a whole December of Etsy.

Industry: E-commerce Investment level: Micro — $300-$1,000 Time to launch: 4-6 weeks to first paid order Best for: Someone with taste who likes putting things together — picking products, arranging them, writing the card. You're a fit if you can store 6-8 boxes of inventory in a closet, drive to a UPS Store weekly, and aren't squeamish about cold-emailing an HR person at a 30-person company. What you'll likely make: ~$600-$900/month by month 4 from a mix of retail and one or two corporate clients, $2-$3K/month by month 8 if you land 3-5 repeat corporate accounts. Math is in Section 4.

Market Opportunity

Most gift baskets you've seen are sad. A bottle of supermarket wine, a wedge of Brie, three crackers, shrink-wrap. The whole category got stuck in 1998. Meanwhile, every company with 20+ employees has someone whose job partly involves "send a nice thing to a client who just had a baby" or "ship 80 onboarding gifts to remote new hires" — and that person is mostly winging it on Amazon. That gap is the opportunity.

US retail e-commerce hit $316.1B in Q4 2025, +5.3% year-over-year — US Census Q4 2025.
Cart abandonment averages 70.22%, with 39% citing "extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)" — Baymard Institute. For a heavy product, shipping has to be in the price, not a $19 surprise at checkout.
Etsy charges about 9-10% per sale (Etsy Sell). Shopify Basic is $29/month with 2.9% + 30¢ processing (Shopify Pricing). For corporate work you'll want your own Shopify checkout — it looks more like a real vendor.

Two customers, two businesses. Retail buyers are gift-shoppers paying $65-$150 and ordering one. Corporate buyers are HR coordinators and EAs ordering 30-200 baskets at $80-$300 each on a company card. The corporate side has higher AOV (average order value) and is year-round instead of Q4-or-bust.

Remote/hybrid work has quietly created a logistics problem at small companies — "we have 14 new hires across 9 cities and need to send each a welcome thing." Big swag vendors charge enterprise prices and ship corporate-y branded mugs. A small curator with taste can charge less and still earn more per basket than retail Etsy.

Start with this idea — free signup, no card required.