As the Thanksgiving meals starts to settle in your stomach, it's time to start thinking about Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) shopping. Checking off all those items on your to-do list for the holidays can be incredibly stressful. Happily, the Internet and e-commerce provide a way to get a lot done without having to run around yourself while you're still recovering from your turkey coma. Washington, D.C. offers plenty of local, online shopping you can do, and we've picked out some of the places online to check out as you start your December shopping.
Pyazza: A luxury consignment shop, Pyazza is a newcomer, still in beta. It's built around the idea of localized, high-quality shopping, with guarantees built in to protect sellers and buyers. So if you're looking to buy something nice on a budget or to sell something expensive to afford other presents, Pyazza can facilitate your plan. sellers can list their high-end products and shoppers can feel secure buying them with precise standards, verified profiles and cashless sales.
Photox: There's nothing nice than a beautiful family portrait, but sometimes pictures can use a little digital help to make everyone look their best. That's where Alexandria-based Photox comes in. You can digitally send them a photograph and a team of professional touch-up artists will fix it up so that everyone looks their best. Using real people trained to use the digital tools almost always gives a better result than automatic adjustments, so if you want to fix red eyes, make yourself look tan or even remove a tattoo for picture to give an easily shocked relative, Photox can make it happen without having to do anything but upload the photo.
Framebridge: Custom framing tech startup Framebridge offers unique and relatively cheap framing services for your favorite paintings and photos (whether touched up by Photox or not) and streamlines the process online to limit all of the stress of going into a crowded store during the holidays to get a photo framed. And, now that Framebridge has launched its new gallery wall concierge service, you can gift someone the chance to take all of those great, custom-framed prints and create a professionally designed art wall for them.
Hexsee: Sometimes picking out gifts alone is too difficult and you need to confer with your friends and family to make sure you're picking something good. D.C.-based Hexsee aims to make that simple even if you can't all go in a group to the store. It lets you make a network to give opinions for what you're shopping for, except instead of having to send links or screenshots, you can share what you're looking at in real-time on whatever website you are browsing. You can all see what's on the screen and determine together if it's really the right gift.
Sweet Thymes: If you're hosting a holiday party this year and want to step it up beyond just the usual plastic Santas, Sweet Thymes will help design and make decorations for any kind of party you like. Started by local entrepreneur Monique Smaby, Sweet Thymes creates unique party decor that will make sure you end up on everyone's "Nice List" for the holidays.
