What Tiny Gifts sells, and who it is for

Tiny Gifts is a shop for the present that has to be small. The one that goes in a stocking toe, in a party bag, on a desk on somebody's last day, or beside a card that would look bare on its own. Nine shelves of things that fit in a hand, with the size and the count printed on every card.

What is on the shelves

The Tiny Gifts catalog splits first by what the thing is, because that is the only question you can answer before you know the person. Something to use up: lip balms, hand creams, shower fizz, small candles. Something to keep: resin figures, pocket tokens with a card, tiny jewelry. Something that does a job: keyrings, card multitools, pocket torches, travel cases. Something to write on: notebooks two and a half inches wide, four-color pens, sticky notes. And something already boxed, for the present there was no time to wrap.

Across those nine shelves run the pages people actually search for: presents under five dollars, presents in bulk, stocking fillers, party favors, thank-you presents, presents for a teacher or a class or a floor of colleagues. Those pages are the same catalog cut a second way, by budget and by who is on the other end.

Who it is for

Somebody buying for a lot of people at once, or for one person who already has everything. Those two turn out to be the same shop. A class of twenty-four needs twenty-four identical things at under two dollars each; a colleague leaving on Friday needs one thing that is specific rather than expensive. Both are solved by small, and both are ruined by a present that needs a shelf to stand on.

It shapes the pages more than any style decision does. The pack count sits beside the price, and the price per piece is worked out underneath, because that is the figure that decides between two boxes that look identical in a photograph. Where a measurement exists in the product data it is printed, because "mini" means one thing on a notebook and another on a candle. And the limits go where a shop would normally print an adjective: which candle burns for one evening, which pack arrives loose rather than bagged, which piece is small enough to worry about near a toddler.

What we will and will not say

A card describes an object: what it is, how big, how many, what it costs. What a present means to the person opening it is not something a catalog can know, and this one leaves that alone. We do not say a keepsake will be treasured, that a set solves a classroom, or that any piece is safe for a particular child. We print the size and name the rule instead, because you know the child and we do not.

Where a page has to explain what a small piece is measured against, it names the body whose job that is: the federal ban on small parts in products meant for the under-threes, the federal requirements that came in after Reese's Law for anything running on a coin battery, and the pediatric guidance on which household objects children choke on. All three are set out on the updates page rather than paraphrased into a promise here.

The one checkable thing we state about ourselves is the year, 2019. Everything else worth knowing about a present is on its card, and how the figures on those cards are kept current is set out on how we update the catalog.