Hello! Let me, resident copywriter Luke Vidic, your affable narrator, introduce you to the people and stories behind Things To Get Me. By navigating to this tab, it's assumed you have an interest in the who's, what's, where's, and why's involved in Things To Get Me, so let's begin!
Things To Get Me started as a project by husband and wife duo, Rob and Raimonda. Rob is a programmer from the UK who's spent years in the industry, and was fortunate to find his passion early in life, picking apart computers when he was just seven years old. With a precocious talent for computing, Rob went on to study computer science and settle into steady work. He developed websites with clients, worked in recruiting, ecommerce, marketing, and ran the gamut of professional roles. But he still hadn't found the perfect outlet for his passion...
Where Rob is the "techie", Raimonda is the site's visionary. She guides the site like a ship's helmsman, charting course and finding new ports. In other words, she’s the one with the ideas. A natural entrepreneur, Raimonda grew up spending much of her childhood at her parent's convenience store in Lithuania. But while the business mindset stuck with her, her nationality did not. Raimonda spread her wings and flew from her nest and became a person of the world. She's travelled to South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Russia, USA, and lived in Australia for four years. She's always been one to travel, experience new things, and take risks.
The pair met on eHarmony, foreshadowing their technologically involved partnership. Raimonda went out on a limb to meet Rob, and the pair have been inseparable ever since. They've become a team: working, traveling, and thinking in tandem. Together they live their lives and do all they can to avoid unnecessary anxieties, but some issues just seem unavoidable. Exhibit A: gift giving.
Stressful complications always seemed to emerge around the holidays. One well-meaning parent would send out a mass email, detailing which nephew or niece wants what, and then ten-aught family members - who Rob and Raimonda love dearly - would begin hitting "reply-all" and after about three replies the conversation is no longer even about the gift anymore, and auntie [redacted] is describing the weather in Grimsby while complaining about the price of flights to Kalamazoo. This of course doesn't touch on the financial ramifications of one child receiving the same gift three times, because three different relatives thought they had agreed to purchase the gift.
With the birth of their daughter in 2017, and an extra layer of confusion added to the gift giving process, the pair knew they needed a solution. Thus, they founded Things To Get Me.
The focus of Things To Get Me has always been about making gift-giving simple - a way of keeping auntie [redacted] in the loop and free of confusion. Rob and Raimonda are proud of this. They shun elaborate features, spam, and excess user information. This website is fervently independent - an alternative to leviathans like Amazon - and the result of two passionate folks.
They do have a small but inspired team helping them along. Lexy Deaville writes unique and inspired blogs for our site, but puts most of her creativity towards crafting our gifting encyclopedia, known as Giftology. I, too, like to add my inspired voice to the mix, writing about the gift-related thoughts that float into my head. All in all, the writing team at Things To Get Me prefers to keep things personal and inspired. Hence why the word 'inspire' was just used in every sentence.
Behind the scenes, Krissy is in charge of operations, managing the day to day tasks. This she does when not busy homeschooling her children. And we also have Claire helping us with quality assurance. She's here to improve the user experience, and make sure we keep things simple as always. When not working, she’s a bit of a mountaineer, having hiked Ben Nevis in Scotland.
And that's the team at Things To Get Me. It's small, but as Rob and Raimonda like to emphasize, keeping things quaint and manageable is their preferred methodology. Quality over quantity is an often repeated platitude, but Rob, Raimonda, and Things To Get Me like to demonstrate its merit. And they hope it's appreciated by you, our lovely user! Thank you for using Things To Get Me for your wish lists!