The Gift of Giving via App: Lihaoma Simplifies Gifting for Beijingers

If you've ever had trouble getting a present for a friend in Beijing, look no further than Lihaoma: the app that makes giving easier, and more fun. We spoke to creator Benjamin Claeys about how the app came to be and what role it can play in the average Beijinger's daily life.

What is the purpose of Lihaoma? 
Many people face the same problem, finding a great gift and gift experience for their friends, relations and love ones. Lihaoma offers a simple solution to this problem. On Lihaoma, we have curated awesome experiences for you to offer your friends. You can even send it through WeChat even if your friend does not have the app! Moreover, the whole gift making process is super interactive and fun!

How does it work?
Wrap your gift with a selfie or another nice picture to make it extra special for your friend. Then, your friend can open his gifts in four different ways:

  1. Location: Your friend will have to go to the address of your choice to open her gift. It’s like a continuous scavenger hunt in the city, let your friend discover her gift while visiting places with an certain emotional value or another amazing place you love.
  2. Riddle: Your friend will have to answer your question correctly in order to open his gift. Ask a personal question or private jokes that only your friend will know!
  3. Timer: Send your gift now with a countdown to open later. Create anticipation and let your friend wait in vain till the exact moment you chose for the gift to open.
  4. Instant: For the lazy ones out there, no or challenge involved here, you simply click and open the gift!

On Lihaoma, you can also discover free gifts from bars, restaurants and other brands to have a free first experience with their brand. The possibility to hunt for free gifts will keep growing from now onwards as we are talking to many brands. We are also active in Shanghai, where my partner Rachel Daydou, a French girl who’s lived in Beijing for a very long time, is taking care of all kind of initiatives. Giving gifts across cities was a key part of the idea. Many people have friends in different cities, so why not give them a gift from time to time to surprise them?

How did you think of the concept?
Honestly, when it’s one of my friend’s birthday, I always panic: How to give them a great gift experience? How to do it right now? Sometimes I need to run around the city for half a day to find an original gift. Then I thought, how can we make this happen in the digital world, but still have an element of excitement when you open your gift? There are many digital gifts out there, but they are so impersonal! Creating an experience from the moment you craft the gift to the moment your friend opens the gift, all the way to when your friends goes to get her gift in the store, that was the key! 

Why does it work well in Beijing?
I’ve been in Beijing for 10 years and I love this city. It’s full of great places that people have never been to. Sometimes it’s hard to discover new places because we just don’t have the time or we just tend to go to the same places we are familiar with out of convenience. This led to me thinking about encouraging people to explore with an incentive: gift-giving. Making an app that would be like a huge scavenger hunt is what will make it fun. Currently, we work with popular places such as Rager Pie, Parlor, Modernista, Moka Bros, Beer Mania, The Tiki Bungalow, Mas tapas bar, Comptoirs de France, Cheers, Ramo, Glo Kitchen and Fitness, Slow Boat, Fang bar, Papp’s Tea Lab, Jian club, Mizu, Mokihi, and many others coming up.

What can we expect from Lihaoma in the future?
We will have many activities and competitions to win plenty of free original gifts. We are talking to some bigger brands to do crossovers in the near future. We’re also thinking of working with music artists and cultural events. For example, with the Lihaoma app you can discover the latest new song, but you need to go to that exact place to listen to, such as in a park or another original place in the city. We focus on interactions between users as that is what keeps it fun for people. Lihaoma is all about creativity and how to surprise each other is an unique way. Our goal is to become the biggest gifting network in China with the most original gifts. Giving a gift is so much fun, it really makes both people happy!

To get involved (in both English and Chinese), check out Lihaoma's website at lihaoma.com.

More stories by this author here.
Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com
Instagram: s.xuagram

Photos courtesy of Lihaoma

Comments

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Anonymouse wrote:

Differences in content, for one.

While most of the articles on TheBeijinger are great in that they keep readers up-to-date with life in Beijing, there seems to be an increase in the number of blatanly promotional non-paid-for editorials. When these articles are posted, its hard not to wonder if there are undeclared conflicts of interest.

Why this app over another? Does the writer personally know people involved with this product? Are they simply shilling for their friends?

Of course one might argue that TheBeijinger is just letting people know about a cool new product/service that's available, but there's a difference between informing readers about something that is taking the city by storm and trying to get people to hop aboard one of any number of startups. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this, of course, but it brings into question TheBeijinger's motivations.

Maybe TheBeijinger is just at the point where it would be a good idea for its writers to reveal any potential conflicts of interest, or the lack thereof.

Why not this app over another? Do you prefer that no apps are written up, out of fear of not touching upon all of them? Surely it is simply impossible, without an infinite amount of staff, to cover everything.

My articles are not paid for unless they are marked as such, and are about things (in this case, an app) that I come across and find interesting. 

the Beijinger

Anonymouse wrote:

Yes. That seems to be the only difference.

What other differences would you like to see, Mr Anonymouse?

 

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Anonymouse wrote:

I'm starting to find it difficuly to differentiate between Sponsored Articles and regular editorials on this site...

A sponsored article is always marked as such.

 

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20