Where finding the gift is part of the gift.
The hunt that started it all
My eldest was turning four, and like most four-year-olds, he wanted volume: a big Lego set, plus all the small extras and surprises that go with a proper birthday pile. We were away that summer, flying, and there wasn't room in the case for anywhere near that much.
So instead of putting a smaller pile out on the table, I hid the gifts around our hotel room and wrote him a treasure hunt to find them instead. I wrote the clues at night after he'd gone to bed, and during his naps on holiday. He loved every second of it. By the end of the day he'd told me, “Mummy, I really want another treasure hunt next year.” And of course his 5th birthday gift hunt was made a reality.
A gift to unwrap. A hunt to remember.
It wasn't meant to become anything. But every year since, about a month before their birthday, one of the boys asks, unprompted, whether they're getting a hunt this year, sometimes with real worry in their voice that the answer might be no.
My eldest often writes his younger brother's hunt himself now, working in whatever he's into that year, because he remembers exactly the fun he had and what made his day special.
Why we made this
Making gifts more memorable — turning the moment of giving into an adventure. That's the whole idea, and it's simpler than it sounds.
Sometimes it's a gift that's hard to give well: cash, a voucher, tickets to something, a bike too big to wrap. Sometimes you're travelling, or the pile is smaller than usual and you don't want that to feel like a smaller birthday. And sometimes you just want the gift moment to last longer than the seconds it takes them to rip off the paper.
As the kids get older, the brief changes again. It's about making something they already asked for still land as a genuine surprise, without anything babyish about how you do it. You can give exactly what's on the list, wrapped in a proper reveal instead of a flat handover. That's the bit we're chasing every time — not the object, the moment.
MUM-OWNED · LONDON-BASED
Who's behind it
Gift Hunt Co. started as a passion project alongside my day job in London, something I made for my own kids for fun, that's slowly turned into a little business. One too many mums said 'thats such a cool idea, you should sell those'.... so eventually I did!
I'm not a trained graphic designer, but I do love to make things. Then I'm using the commercial experience I've picked up over the years to run the business solo, alongside a busy family life.
It's why every hunt is built to be quick to set up rather than a project in itself. It's also why everything here is digital for instant download.
How we work
Every hunt starts as an idea I write myself — story, clues, puzzles, all of it — built on years of hunts I've handwritten for my own two boys.
No hunt gets launched without my kids having tested it (and usually having given extensive feedback). However, you won't see my kids' faces in my content, or mine much either. I don't let my kids use social media, and using their images here would sit oddly with that.
I do also like to be open about AI. Whilst all the hunts I write & test myself, I use AI to generate some images (people included to avoid showing the faces of my own kids online) as well as to help me with other things I'm less good at.