"Experience Gifts" Market Surging

On Tuesday, the Signature Days company announced that life lists are surging in popularity.

The company produces and markets "experience gifts" that people can purchase for friends and family via gift cards. The company currently offers more than 3,500 of these experiences--ranging from "action and adventure" to "wine and gourmet"--in 50 major metropolitan areas of the United States.

Signature Days says that the growing number of books and movies about what to do and see before one dies and "life list" websites are fueling their surging niche industry.

"Signature Days allows consumers to turn lifelong dreams into reality. And, most people would be surprised to learn that these experiences are not only available to the super-rich," says Andrew Playford, CEO and co-founder.

"We all have a limited number of days on this earth -- and some of those days should be extraordinary. That's why we've created...experiences that help people drift away from the drawls of everyday life and sip in the moments that take their breath away," adds Chris Widdess, president and co-founder.

The experience gift has emerged as the Internet, affluence, and a niche market for getting people in touch with their fantasies in a real-life setting have all converged to drive the impetus for their offering.

Although most experience gifts are easily affordable even for people in the middle class, the rising tide of affluence in the United States has created a thirst for fulfilling personal fantasies, even if in a small way, as the possibility of being able to do so becomes more realistic. People who have to spend too much time working at a "real j-o-b" but who dreamed of being Formula One racers or spiritual gurus when younger now feel that they have earned the right to have an authentic taste of their fantasy.

The experience gift has its critics, and these are mainly religious people. They say that it is motivated too much by a sense of only being immortal for a limited time, with people having a growing, gnawing sense of "I only live once" instead of setting their sights on the next life where they will live eternally if they do the right thing in this world.

However, their own critics say that with increasing sophistication and data comes increasing skepticism about matters of faith; and, since faith is not knowledge, people need to take advantage of offers to live the good life now, following the Oriental philosophers' dictum of "one world at a time, please".

But non-religious critics of the concept say that it is too superficial an offering and will tend not to bring people the fulfillment they desire from their fantasies.

Original Newswire Source:
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