6 Things You May Not Know About Wish, the App Challenging eBay & Amazon

The shopping app Wish was founded in 2011 by two ex-Google and ex-Yahoo veterans. The San Francisco based eCommerce company primarily sells clothing, electronics and makeup items via its popular app at heavily discounted prices. You can purchase a men’s suit for $45, a fitness tracker for $18 or lipstick for as little as $2. Wish keeps its prices low by selling a host of unbranded products, selling directly from manufacturers and offering longer shipping times (sometimes products can take a month to arrive). It is estimated that 94% of the manufactures that sell on Wish are from China. The company’s success has caused heavy weights like Amazon and Alibaba to take notice. Both companies are reported to have tried to purchase the eCommerce company but Wish declined. Here is what you need to know about one of the fastest growing eCommerce companies.

There are more than one million sellers on Wish’s platform that sell over 300 million items. Amazon, in contrast has two million sellers but for Wish to reach that many sellers in less than ten years is impressive for any marketplace (remember Amazon has been in business for 24 years).
On Black Friday in 2018 Wish was the fourth most used shopping app in the US ahead of companies like Best Buy, eBay and Macy’s. Amazon took first place on Black Friday followed by Walmart, then Target. The company surpassed 75 million monthly active users in 2017.
The company is valued at over $8 billion and made over $1 billion in revenue for the first time in 2017. Wish estimated that revenue was on track to double in 2018. Revenues have doubled every year since the company was launched eight years ago. It has also raised over $1.8 billion to-date.
The success of Wish and similar sites led both eBay and Amazon to set up “$10 and less” sections on their sites
Wish is one of the sponsors of the Los Angeles Lakers, in a deal reportedly worth between $36 million to $42 million
It has a primarily young and middle-class customer base