Fun gifts for international friends.

April 26, 2012 8:21 PM

Quirky shops that ship to the UK and accept orders from the US?

I have a friend (who has been known to frequent the site, hence the anonymous question) who has a birthday coming up. The challenge? She lives in the UK and I in the US. Every time present time comes up, I struggle to find online shops that sell interesting/quirky things (like uncommongoods.com) that ship to the UK and allow US billing addresses. Can anyone help point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance!

posted by anonymous to shopping (6 answers total)

Topatoco stocks quirky t-shirts, tote bags, and other items from online comics and they will ship internationally. Less quirky but I'm fairly sure amazon.uk will take orders from US customers. Depending on her tastes, there are also several great museum gift stores that should ship to her, like the Museum of London (Build a Taxi kit! Tea towels! Plague things!) or the V&A which has incredible design-based products including British housewares, fabrics, quirky hats, prints, and whatnot. Or the robots and science kits from the Science Museum! I admit I've never ordered online from them, just spent way too much on fancy stationary, London Archaeology books, and robot birthday cards in person...
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:52 PM on April 26, 2012

I love the MoMA store - they have lots of neat, quirky things in various price ranges. I just checked, and it looks like everything except oversize items can be shipped internationally.
posted by insectosaurus at 9:19 PM on April 26, 2012

I send gifts from the Transglobal Emporium, vendors of the fabulously and indubitably British Luxury Shed Calendar.

Lurgashall English Mead is quite awesome, though I've never tried to send it to someone, only had it brought along and shared by others visiting me.
posted by XMLicious at 10:29 PM on April 26, 2012

In my experience, Etsy is the best way to do this - it's got a lot of stick recently about resellers, and justifiably, but it's still full of really unusual and charming stuff. You can filter it so that you are only looking at shops in the UK which should cut down on shipping costs.
posted by Acheman at 12:30 AM on April 27, 2012

Manufactum
posted by caek at 1:55 AM on April 27, 2012

Suggest you find a UK shop to avoid your friend having to pay for customs clearance and duty to get their present. Customs can and do open parcels irrespective of what the declaration says and charge you for the privilege :)
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:18 AM on April 27, 2012 [2 favorites]