The S1 talks a lot about their logistics platform and diversifying their merchant base to come from different countries, instead of just China - and rightfully so, since until July Wish’s business was subsidized by the Universal Postal Union treaty. Thanks to the UPU, Before July it was cheaper to mail a package to Chicago from Shanghai than to shop to Chicago from Dallas.
This has now changed and so the era of cheap shipping from China is over. It’s unclear how much their logistics platform mitigates the new costs, but interesting that they had to go out and build their own fulfillment and cross border carrier services to mitigate.
Do you have a source on this? Most claims of this nature that I've seen fall apart on investigation - usually they compare a bulk wholesale rate for slow international shipping to a retail rate for priority domestic shipping to get this result. I'd like to see an apples to apples comparison that shows this.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/23/641140144/unraveling-the-myst...
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
This is a business built on top of cheap Chinese goods, subsidized shipping and low customer expectations. High transaction volume with very low margins, and totally exposed to the winds of international trade policy.
This is just a fancy wrapper on top of AliExpress which is honestly superior when it comes to buy crap. In AliExpress you get way more insight into what you're buying and its quality, shipping times, shipping rates, etc. In Wish you don't and you will most likely get the most low tier quality product.
I hope that an IPO can bring more discipline into their business and help them move to a more sustainable and innovative model.
Nope. They run ads with outrageous lies and some people fall for them.
and dropbox is just a fancy wrapper on top of ...
and airbnb is just a fancy wrapper on top of ...
Wish does not have that. The shopping experience on Aliexpress is similar if not better and it is backed by Alibaba so it will only grow. Wish capitalizes on low customer expectations and dirt cheap prices. There is nothing in that business model that can't be easily copied by another Chinese company.
Ali does not and I doubt they ever will.
For pricier items, it can make a difference.
Not like comparing s3 to dropbox
I'd argue that counterfeits are a much bigger problem for a company like Amazon that people actually use for "qualitative" purchases.
Also the numerous videos from linustechtips and many other reputable channels detailing in painful detail how scammy wish is.
Also my mother in law who bought a $12 fitness tracker that died after 2 months.
My opinion is that they've begun exhausting the pool of people they can afford to convert since the lifetime value per new member must be atrocious and they rely heavily on marketing to new users to keep the machine going. Everyone has seen a wish ad by now - at this point there are only 2 segments: those willing to give it a shot, and those who have decided not to. If those that were in the first camp don't keep buying because the experience is terrible then you are spending progressively more to try and convert that second camp as things go on. I don't think they have a future-secure business model.
edit: a quick review of their s1 shows they spend 100% of their profit on marketing, and that aside from coronavirus bump they have not grown either in margins or growth since 2018.
When I think of Wish.com I think of gimmicky, low quality, chinese products. Very few sellers are actually trying to build a brand, so they aren't trying to build a quality product. Wish.com is trying to build a brand though so they need to do better at quality control.
Basically an Aliexpress clone with cheap chinese stuff
I find it kinda fun to get a new bike light or little gadget that I forgot I ordered.
There are a billion product categories where an unbranded direct-from-manufacturer product is entirely adequate. I don't need to pay for a premium name brand on a basic phone case, Arduino clone, USB 2.0 cable, or a replacement part for a toy.
You can lean into that. With sites like Aliexpress and Banggood, I know more or less what I'm going to get, and generally the products meet expectations, so I'm a happy return customer.
Wish starts out in much worse territory. They overpromised and underdelivered for long enough that they've become a meme, an anti-brand. I suspect they've been able to show appealing numbers just by burning through the suckers who will try any too-good-to-be-true offer once, but eventually you run out of those customers and have to pivot towards building a repeat customer base. How do you do that? Maybe aggressively culling products with poor customer feedback, strong guarantees, and reined in advertising designed to prevnent disappointment.
Used an anonymous email to register eg clean profile and the front page was filled with scammy hair loss products, male enhancement pills, and foot stickers that claimed it could help you grow 1-6 inches (!), among other cheap suspect goods that looked straight out of some tourist market in Asia.
Honestly a little depressing selling Chinese counterfeit crap at scale is a good business. Not exactly something I find particularly exciting or noble.
Is there glut of them or are they just overly represented on HN at the moment?
2017: 160
2018: 192
2019: 160
2020: 190 (YTD)
IPO proceeds year-to-date is $67.6b, the largest amount of the decade if you discount Alibaba's $25b IPO in 2014
Maybe everyone waited til the worst of the covid-panic was over.
why more tech IPOs these days? tech companies are likely finding their stock to be valued richly and want to issue equity now (for the same $ amount raised) to dilute themselves less.
My family in the Midwest loves wish because they purchase from there knowing the quality isn’t going to be superb. My mom buys random things from them like clothes, jewelry, and random appliances for literally $5. She’s willing to wait three weeks to get her stuff because it’s such a good deal. My dad was able to get a quality DSLR for $50. He doesn’t care if the brand is unknown.
Most people on Hacker News (software engineers) probably wouldn’t need to use an app like Wish. It wouldn’t make sense.
No he wasn't.
I'd be interested in what he got more specifically. My guess is that it's either a cheaply produced chinese model (with which specs? mft mount, one of the brands, something chinese ... can you review it?) or an old and used name brand model.
> Our advertising costs to acquire new users constituted 96% of our sales and marketing expenses, and sales and marketing expenses constituted 91% of our operating expenses, in 2019.
That's pretty astounding. In 2019 they spent $1.46 billion on sales and marketing, of which $1.41 billion went to new user acquisition. According to the quarterly breakdown of metrics on p108, their LTM Active Buyers went from 61m in March 2019 to 63 million in March 2020, implying they spent nearly a billion and a half to increase their purchasing base by 2 million users... even looking at their peak of June 30 2020, they still only have 70 LTM buyers, implying a CAC for "quality" users of at least $150, and very likely more. Their discussion of CAC payback and LTV / CAC only includes numbers from 2016, which looks like their best year in terms of LTM Active Buyer growth, both on a percentage basis and on an absolute basis... For me to have any faith in this business, I would need to see some kind of analysis of "organic" purchasing behavior. If they turn off the ad spend, will people continue to use the product?
If you had a scalable channel you would expect to accrue more customers as old cohorts retained customers, but this instead just looks like exchanging ad dollars for one, two-time purchase customers which is why the ad spend is so high and the life blood of the company.
Hard to imagine this company not getting hammered by the street unless they have a one-time lift from COVID shopping, but long term hard to bullish on this company especially when comparing their S&M expense vs R&D expense.
[0]https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds...
'You will love these earbuds . I mainly use the wireless earbuds, I am very satisfied in all aspects. These earbuds also have a solid voice for music. They are easy to pair. More than enough scope. These earbuds work very beautifully. Awesome battery life and clarity. These earbuds are the most convenient and comfortable. I love these earbuds , I already want another pair. Buy them. You will love these earbuds .'
I'm more confused than anything. Is the intent to suggest that AirPod Pros are perfect to wear on a date or at the club?
"Massdrop for chinese products"
If you are going to build a wrapper company around aliexpress, might as well make curation your strong point. Basically a Chi-fi model as it exists in the audiophile scene, but extended to other domains.
Pair that with some 1st party support for 3rd part products and you have something really good on your hands.
I would think it would manifest kind of like Uniqlo. In that it is great value-for-money and has a (relatively) small but curated lineup of offerings that cater to a very wide audience.
Something I haven't yet seen provided without a very significant price increase is customer support (which could already mean just a page listing all products with specs or a community forum).
They don't design the stuff, they look at the clones in the showrooms or catalogs, check out what the reps bring to them, pick the ones they like and have a few customisations done.
Then they support that product.
Harbour Freight, D-Link, Wal-Mart oh I dunno, almost any brand which doesn't obviously have very unique/distinctive designs works this way.
All stories I've heard about Wish involve products arriving past the expected date, and a refund being issued.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1822250/000119312520...
Literally the same amount. Will it grow without full ads burn? Who the heck can tell.
But I'm all seriousness, everything I've seen on wish in the last has been cheap, low-quality garbage.
I'm beginning to wonder if entire unicorn ecosystem is just a funnel to subsidize ad / infrastructure / payment rail revenues at the leading providers.
If by some miracle Wish gets 15x, they'll be a spectacular short opportunity.
One of them took about six weeks to arrive, after it was promised to arrive in three. When it arrived broken, I was told there was nothing I could do because I was outside the return window. It was a strip of LED lights, and only the blue lights worked beyond the first section.
The second item was also promised in three weeks, but took nine to arrive, which was sad because it was a gift for my wife's birthday, which came many weeks after her birthday. The item was one of those white void photo boxes with a strip of LED lights. It worked well enough for about three uses and then the USB connector broke right off. So it's now just a useless white plastic box.
So yeah, I'll probably never order from them again.
That's completely outrageous. What could their rationale possibly be?
Some of the products that i bought like a tap faucet filter exceeded my expectations while anything that is electronics had a life span of 2 weeks to 4 months (depending upon usage)..
Its a place for cheap products, and the local fivebelow or dollar tree can easily beat them in retail , may be they are trying to do a fivebelow or dollar tree online, which is what their niche is
This feels like probably more of a symptom that the Chinese merchant base is probably a bigger amount of smaller shops whereas these US shops (who still only take a minority of the top 10, which is a largely useless metric anyway considering it is unlikely that even 10 large merchants make up a small proportion of sales) are probably part of a smaller volume but are more successful simply because there is less US sellers so there is less competition especially in categories like hobby which are harder for China to serve (I mean think about it, could you name a seller on Wish? It doesn't feel like the opportunity is marketed much). Also the 268% non-China growth metric doesn't really mean much without context and while I do think that Wish is probably succeeding in expanding their merchant base I do feel like their dependence on China is a lot larger then they would like to admit, and even under Joe Biden I doubt that world pressure on China will ease any time soon so Wish may have an unstable future ahead.
