"But many people are feeling that they simply have enough 'stuff,'" says Alex Barseghian, "chief experience officer" of Samba Days, a gift box company headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. "What they're really looking for now are activities and experiences that create memories.

"It could be anything from a unique dining experience to a custom-built winery tour to skydiving, white water rafting, driving a Ferrari, or virtually piloting a jet plane."

Realizing that marketing what he calls "experiential" gift cards for such activities would work if he brought together many small-business suppliers – a concept he says is already popular in Europe and Australia – Barseghian took a huge risk.

It was 2008, the recession was deepening, and his wife was pregnant with their first child. Nevertheless, Barseghian quit his job as a marketing executive at Aeroplan in Montreal to launch Samba Days.

Samba Days' sole stock-in-trade is experiential gift boxes, which Barseghian calls "gift cards on steroids." Barseghian's major role has been to convince major retailers to carry Samba Days gift boxes, while simultaneously assembling an array of suppliers whose modest size makes the successful mass marketing of gift cards on their own impractical, if not impossible.

As an initially small business owner himself, Barseghian says he knew "what it feels like to compete with big businesses. Samba Days allows the little guy to see their services … on the shelves of top-tier Canadian retail outlets."

Sure enough, synergy exploded all around when Barseghian landed select locations for Shoppers Drug Mart, The Bay and Chapters Indigo stores in Western Canada and Ontario.

This holiday season, Sears and Longo's will also carry Samba Days gift boxes, while a national rollout for The Bay is scheduled for early next year.

As well, Samba Days is a preferred supplier to Travel Professionals International (TPI), Canada's largest network of independent travel consultants.

Samba Days gift boxes are also available online and through various reward programs including Visa Infinite, Aeroplan and RBC Rewards. The company now has a presence in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, and will soon launch in Quebec and in the Maritimes.

The gift boxes are customized to be unique and ideally appropriate gifts for family, friends and colleagues, and can be used as corporate gifts and sales incentives, as well as for employee recognition or team building.

Voicing the feelings of a lot of other suppliers, Andrew Dunt, vice president of National Helicopters Inc., recently told the Ottawa Business Journal, "With very little money for advertising, Samba Days has allowed my company to be showcased in over 600 stores across Canada."

Other suppliers are too numerous to name in this story, but they include purveyors of adventures ranging from driving everything from a luxury car to a monster truck; flying a plane or riding in a helicopter; snorkeling, kite surfing and fly fishing in exotic locales; kayaking in the Thousand Islands; cycling through wine country; a Segway tour of Toronto's Distillery District; rock climbing, go-carting and paintball fighting.

For the less action-oriented, there are lessons in glass blowing, belly dancing, DJ-ing, circus acrobatting, performing magic tricks and wine connoisseurship, plus gourmet getaways.

Mega-pampering sessions include lymphatic detox and hot stone massages, Reiki relaxation, various mani-pedi-massage treats and even a "Girlfriends' Getaway" featuring many of these treatments.

The advantage of hooking up with Samba Days was a no-brainer for David Calado, founder and wine education director of Toronto-based Global Wine Tour.

"It brought me a reach that I couldn't have hoped to build on my own for years," he says. "Having my company represented at retailers like Shoppers Drug Mart and The Bay and Chapters means that I'm reaching an audience I wouldn't have been able to do without that partnership." Calado adds that, after 18 months with Samba Days, his educational wine tasting workshops now regularly sell out. "And over time, that exposure should lead to (hosting) more and more events; instead of one or two a month, it might be six or seven."

So what do Samba Days gift boxes look like? Concentrating on high-quality and enticing innovation, Barseghian came up with the idea of dividing the suppliers' wares into six themes "based on Canadian lifestyles." They are: Adventure, Body & Soul, Getaway, Life & Culture, Gourmet and Wine. To celebrate special occasions, the gift-giver simply picks a theme box to give to a recipient. Each attractively packaged gift box contains up to 15 activities, so the recipient can choose whichever one is most appealing to their taste. Theme boxes range in price from $49 to $329.

Gift boxes can be exchanged if recipients change their mind, and may expire after one year if they're not used because, Barseghian explains, "after that much time, circumstances for our small business owners, such as fuel costs, may change, and we've got to protect them from losing money." Experiences are not necessarily supplier-exclusive within their themes, he says, "because the idea is to give people choices. If it's a wine experience, for example, recipients get to pick which winery they want to visit." With profound scalability in its business model, Barseghian says Samba Days' future looks bright.

"And we just launched a partnership with Via Rail in which not only do we buy travel gift cards for our site, but we're going to work with them on creating experiences on their routes."

As for big fish he hopes to land in the near future, Barseghian names grocery chains Loblaw, Metro and Sobeys, as well as Rexall Pharma Plus, all of which he says are "important tier-one companies because they are destination shopping spots for Canadians.

"Overall, our plan is to be the number-one experiential gift-box supplier in Canada."

Why did Barseghian choose such an offbeat name for his company?

"The Samba is the official dance of Brazil and it's renowned for its passion and exuberance," he explains. "But what's most interesting is that it's not really one single dance, but rather a set of dances. What we're offering is a set of experiences, a variety of steps to explore.

"We think Canadians are lagging behind people in other parts of the world when it comes to joie de vivre and we're aiming to change that."