Somebody is charging $190 an hour to wrap presents. So I went digging into what gift wrapping services charge, what it costs to start, what a beginner might keep and where the customers are.
Quick answer
- What services charge: The businesses I looked at advertise from $9 a gift to $190 an hour for one wrapper.
- What it costs to start: My bare-bones Walmart kit came to $14.77 (paper, tape, ribbon, tags).
- What a beginner might keep: About $40 an hour in my made-up example, before travel, marketing and taxes. That number is built on my own assumptions.
- Where the bigger money seems to be: Companies. Corporate gifting and retail events are where the volume is.
Somebody on Threads mentioned gift wrapping services and I went straight down the rabbit hole. That’s how I found a woman whose company charges $190 an hour to wrap Christmas presents.
And my first question was, “who is paying almost $200 for somebody to put paper and a bow on a box?”
Girl…apparently enough people that she’s not the only one doing it. Some services charge by the gift. Some get hired for corporate events. There’s a whole little industry here I had never once thought about.
So I wanted to know two things. How does the money work? And could somebody with scissors, a roll of paper and zero customers start this before Christmas?
How much do gift wrapping services charge?
Anywhere from about $9 a gift to $190 an hour for one wrapper, from what I found. Where a business lands in that range depends on the city, whether it brings the paper and who it’s selling to. A lot of them also make you book a minimum number of hours.
These are the prices customers pay, by the way. What the owner keeps is a separate question (and a much harder one to find).
| Business | Where | How they charge | Advertised price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nifty Package | California | Hourly, materials included | $190/hr for one wrapper ($295/hr for two), 2-hour minimum. Per-gift wrapping starts at $25. |
| Black Wrapped | Dallas, TX | Per gift, plus on-site | Small from $9, medium $11, large $17, extra-large $25. On-site from $150/hr, 2-hour minimum. |
| The Wrap Suite | Charlotte, NC | Per gift, plus corporate events | Classic wraps from $12 (small) to $25+ (XL). For corporate events, $150/hr for one wrapper or $200/hr for two, 4-hour minimum.* |
| TaskRabbit (Houston) | Local marketplace | Through the app | Started at $30 when I checked. TaskRabbit says the national average is $20/hr. |
*The Wrap Suite’s hourly event rate is what I found while researching the video. Their site now says to contact them for corporate pricing. All prices checked October 24, 2026.
That range is wild to me. It’s basically the same skill, and somebody’s charging $9 while somebody else is charging $190. As I said in the video, “It all depends on how you package and market yourself.”
The $190 makes more sense once you see who Nifty is selling to. They advertise corporate gift wrapping, retail brand activations (think the wrapping station at the mall), gift fulfillment and private clients. When a company sends out a stack of client gifts, every one of those boxes has the company’s name on it. Somebody is going to notice a crooked corner.
What do you need to start a gift wrapping business from home?
Less than I expected. I priced the cheapest setup I could find at Walmart and it came to $14.77.
Bare-bones starter kit
- Wrapping paper, one roll: $4.97
- Tape: $3.44
- Curly ribbon: $2.37
- Gift tags, one pack: $3.99
- Total: $14.77
That doesn’t include scissors, boxes or gas if you’re doing pickup and drop-off. Fancier paper costs more too, so that goes into your prices.
Buying the paper is the easy part. If I were doing this, I’d want the offer settled before anybody paid me. Am I charging per gift or per hour, what are my prices and when do people get their gifts back? I’d also figure out who’s supplying the paper, because some businesses will want to use their own so everything matches their brand. That changes the price.
And I’d want to know how I’m getting paid before I ever showed up to an event. As I put it in the video, “You need to know up front, how am I going to get my money?” Business licenses, sales tax and home business rules change by city and state too, so that’s worth checking where you live.
How much can you make wrapping gifts?
This is the part nobody puts on their website. None of the businesses I looked at say what they keep, so I did some rough math of my own.
And remember, that $190 an hour is what Nifty Package charges the customer. Supplies, staff, travel, admin and taxes all come out of it. Even if it’s just you, there’s marketing and setup time nobody is paying you for.
My worked example (made-up numbers)
| 10 gifts at $15 each | $150 |
| Materials at about $3 a gift | minus $30 |
| Left before other costs | $120 |
| Time: 2.5 hours wrapping + 30 minutes travel and setup | 3 hours |
| Roughly | $40 an hour before travel costs, marketing and taxes |
Not bad! But I’m going to say it here like I said it in the video: “These are just assumptions. These are not verified earnings, so don’t come for me.”
For a pace check, one Canadian company, Wrapping Happy, advertises 8 to 10 gifts an hour per wrapper. My math has you going slower than that, since I’m assuming you’re new at this.
Where do you find gift wrapping customers?
I’d start close to home. Neighbors and parents are the easiest people to reach. The bigger jobs are with businesses that buy gifts in bulk, where one client could mean a hundred gifts at once.
People near you
This is a “show me” service. People need to see gifts so pretty they’re like, okay, she knows what she’s doing. Post your photos and videos with your booking deadlines on:
- Instagram Reels and TikTok
- Local Facebook groups and neighborhood community pages
- Nextdoor
- A community center bulletin board, like it’s the ’80s and ’90s
- TaskRabbit and local service directories
- Parent groups, because a lot of parents do not have the time or the mental capacity to sit and wrap a mountain of gifts
Heads up on Facebook Marketplace…it’s tricky for services. A services listing I posted there in the past wasn’t approved, so groups are probably the better bet.
Businesses
This is where the volume is. I’d pitch:
- HR teams, office managers and marketing teams
- Real estate brokerages, who buy gifts for their clients
- Mortgage and title offices, which run on relationships and don’t have time to wrap
- Hotels, event planners and local retailers with holiday events
I’d bring a simple service menu and sample photos. Those gifts go out with their company’s name on them, so they want them to look good every single time. It’s a lot of pitching, which is the unglamorous side of building a business around the life you want.
Experiences
Give people something fun to pay for:
- A wrapping party where friends bring their gifts, there’s some cocktails or wine and it’s a whole vibe
- A table at a holiday market, festival or fair (find them on Facebook and Eventbrite)
- Partnering with a boutique, a bookstore or an apartment building. When I lived in Houston, my building had local vendors come set up tables and we’d shop right there.
Vendor fees vary, so check what kind of traffic an event expects first. Some events just don’t make their vendors money. When I had my jewelry business, I’d get vendor tables that didn’t pay off the way I hoped.
When should you start a Christmas gift wrapping business?
Right now, if you want corporate clients or a vendor table at a holiday market. Neighbors and parents can wait a couple of weeks, as long as your booking deadlines are posted and you’ve left yourself time to get everything back.
If it were me, I’d split it up like this:
| When | Focus |
|---|---|
| Early November | Make your sample wraps and photos. Pitch offices, brokerages, title companies, hotels and retailers. Ask market organizers if there’s still room for a vendor table. |
| Mid to late November | Post your offer and booking deadlines in local groups, Nextdoor and parent groups. Book wrapping parties. |
| December | Wrap. Stick to your deadlines and leave yourself enough room to get everything back on time. |
How do you test it without wasting money?
Cheaply. Make a few sample wraps, put out one offer and see if anybody books before you spend real money on supplies.
- Wrap three or four samples and photograph them. They need to look like something people would be excited to pay for. “You don’t want it to look like your five-year-old cousin wrapped the gift” and then charge somebody $15 or more for it.
- Put out one offer with your prices and return dates.
- Decide who supplies the paper and price for it.
- Wait and see if anybody books before you buy 50 rolls of paper. Nobody wants to hit the end of December with a closet full of wrapping paper and a whole year to wait.
TaskRabbit is another way in if you don’t want to set up a whole business. You register, set your availability and wait to get accepted (and acceptance depends on your market). And if you’re already piecing together income from more than one place, a seasonal thing like this is one more piece you could test.
So…about that $190 an hour
You can test this with about $15 in supplies. The $190 an hour I started with, though, “is an established company’s retail rate. That’s not any beginner earning promise.” There are no guarantees here. It comes down to making an offer and getting in front of people.
Some people will read all of this and go, “No, I’m not wrapping nobody’s Christmas gifts.”
Fair.
She’s Getting Paid for This is an Out of Edits series where I go down the rabbit hole on the surprising ways women are making money, then dig into who’s paying, what it costs to start and how the money works. Prices in this piece are what each business advertises to customers, and my math is an example built on my own assumptions.
Want the next one? I write about money AND life every Sunday in Okay, Now What?