A Dallas-based procuring app that makes sending a present from an area retailer as straightforward as ordering an Uber to trip there has arrived in San Antonio. Known as Afloat, the on-delivery app permits gift-givers to pick out and buy presents from high San Antonio indie boutiques.
Like Amazon, items might be delivered same- or next-day. Not like Amazon, they’re going to be packaged and wrapped superbly and embody a handwritten observe.
“Gifting is such a stupendous follow, and essential for constructing and strengthening relationships of every kind, however it usually falls to the underside of to-do lists,” says founder Sarah-Allen Preston in a press release. “Afloat brings the most effective native outlets proper to your fingertips, making it seamless to present thoughtfully on the go.”
Afloat launched October 30 in San Antonio with eight collaborating unbiased retailers:
Capri by Sundown & Co., a girls’s attire and equipment boutiqueSunset & Co., a house decor, present, and monogram shopBaker Tatum, a luxurious dwelling and present boutique Meadow, a girls’s attire and equipment boutiqueBelles & Beaux, a child and youngsters’s clothes storeAlamo Crops & Petals, a premier floral design shopKismet Bakery, a from-scratch bakeryLearning Categorical, a youngsters’s toy retailer
There are extra to return, the corporate says.
“Afloat is keen about supporting native outlets to maintain commerce, jobs, creativity, and curators within the native communities… [and] empowering them to compete among the many quickly rising, metasearch tech platforms,” Preston says.
No extra excuses for tardy birthday presents.
Photograph courtesy of Afloat
Customers merely obtain the Afloat app or click on on the web site, store a menu of items from native shops (organized by metropolis and event), buy, and ship them on to a recipient. The items are ready, wrapped, and delivered on the identical or subsequent day. A $15 payment contains gift-wrapping, a handwritten observe, and doorstep supply. (Be aware that out-of-town deliveries are potential however will take longer.)
Preston, knowledgeable occasion planner in her 30s, says she received the concept for the app throughout two life-changing occasions: her divorce and her son’s open-heart surgical procedure.
As a result of she’d all the time beloved to have a good time relationships, holidays, occasions, and milestones, she says, she wished a method to categorical her gratitude personally for the outpouring of affection she’d acquired from household and buddies throughout her most troublesome occasions.
Her resolution was Afloat, which permits folks to rapidly and conveniently ship items to family and friends for any event (not simply the “good” events, she stresses) whereas additionally supporting native brick-and-mortar shops.
“I spotted that there was no platform that existed to assist me help these going by means of laborious occasions like I had and have a good time the comfortable ones, too,” she says. “So, I created it. And gifting grew to become Afloat’s love language.”
Sarah-Allen Preston created Afloat to assist present givers and native outlets, too.Photograph courtesy of Afloat
Preston, a Southern Methodist College grad who lives in Dallas, launched Afloat in 2022 in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri after which Dallas. The app powers up in San Antonio and Fort Value this month, and might be in Houston, Nashville, and Atlanta by the tip of the 12 months, she says.
Preston says she hopes San Antonio customers discover it particularly useful through the tense vacation season.
“It’s so essential to present thoughtfully, however through the holidays, it’s particularly laborious,” she says. “Afloat makes it straightforward to ship native items with a really private contact to neighbors, academics, buddies, and household.”
To assist have a good time the launch, Preston has created the particular promo code LOVECULTUREMAP at no cost supply on introductory orders.
To obtain the app and store, go to theafloatapp.com or observe alongside on Instagram @afloatlife.
