Brother

Brothers are difficult. We think that's because they exist in this weird limbo. Tight enough that you feel cheap buying them something impersonal but not usually close enough that you've spent hours talking about the kind of thing they’d actually like. You know them better than most but still, every year it’s the same question staring back at you. We wanted stuff that was as tough to get wrong as we are. We built this because we were sick of falling back on whisky gifts and novelty socks. Don’t get us wrong, we like whisky and we like novelty socks, we just don’t reach for them when we’re excited to buy something. We started thinking about all the brothers out there who deserve something as awesome as their little sister picked out, especially the brothers that are good at this game. You know the ones. Always find just what you wanted, every time, without making a big fuss about it. Gifts that fit in that sweet category somewhere in the middle. Stuff that’s thoughtful without being overbearingly so. Finding that is kind of a magic trick when it comes to brothers. Lean too far into the sentimental and it’s frat boy instant noodles in weird grenadine sauce territory. Go too practical and you might as well give them a card with ‘I ran out of ideas’ written on it. But find that sweet spot? Those are the gifts that are worth waiting for. Things your younger brother would love. Things your older brother would slay with. Brothers come in so many different forms because people do and their age and interests matter. We didn’t try to create lists that covered every incarnation of brother that’s out there. But we did select stuff we think works for every brother regardless of how they present. The tough ones. The ones that insist they don’t want anything. The ones that you spend hours rooting through Pinterest only to have your older brother sigh and say ‘Uhh… do you think I really need another scrubby?” Yeah, the ones we know and love despite having awkwardly grown up with them for God knows how long. When you put something in that pile, that’s what we think about. Would we give this to ourselves? It’s the only test we trust. Whether it’ll photograph well or sounds fancy on a list means squat if you hand it over and feel like you didn’t nail it. Some things in here are small. Some are seriously special. But all of it is things we’d give to ourselves and pass that test. Nothing else made the cut.