Wish is an American online e-commerce platform that facilitates transactions between sellers and buyers. Wish was founded in 2010 by Piotr Szulczewski, James Prendergast and Danny Zhang. Wish is operated by ContextLogic Inc. in San Francisco, United States. The platform employs browsing technologies which personalise shopping visually for each customer, rather than relying on a search bar format. It allows sellers to list their products on Wish and sell directly to consumers. Wish acts as an intermediary handling payments but does not stock the products themselves or manage returns.
History
Wish was started by Piotr Szulczewski, a former Google engineer, as a software company called ContextLogic. In September 2010, ContextLogic received $1.7 million in investments and involved Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman. In May 2011, Szulczewski invited college friend Danny Zhang to relaunch the company as Wish. It was created as an application that allowed shoppers to create wish lists of their favorite products before matching them with merchants. They also earned revenue with a Pay-per-click model by advertising on Facebook. In 2013, Szulczewski met with Hans Tung, an investor with GGV Capital in Menlo Park, California and noted that a large number of sales were coming from Florida, Texas and the Mid-West rather than New York or California. Wish became an e-commerce site after asking merchants to host their products directly on the Wish application, with Wish taking a portion of each sale. In 2017, Wish signed a multi-year partnership with the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers. Wish conducted a World Cup campaign in 2018, that featured Neymar Junior, Paul Pogba, Tim Howard, Gareth Bale, Robin Van Persie, Claudio Bravo and Gianluigi Buffon. In 2018, Wish was the most-downloaded shopping application worldwide. The company doubled its revenue to $1.9 billion. As of 2019 it is the third-biggest e-commerce marketplace in the United States by sales. In August 2019, Wish received a Series H funding round, led by equity firm General Atlantic, taking the company's assets to $11.2 billion. JD.com is an investor in Wish.
Services
The Wish platform employs browsing technologies which personalise shopping visually for each customer rather than relying on a search bar format. More than 1 million merchants list their products on Wish’s platform to sell directly to consumers, eliminating distributor fees for the sellers while providing shoppers with low-priced merchandise. The bulk of merchandise available through the app comes from China and other overseas distributors. Products are usually smaller items which are cheaper to ship, aided by an agreement between China Post and the U.S. Postal Service which lowers costs of shipping for goods weighing less than 2kg. Wish offers Express Shipping in 5 days, or 6-8 days in some cases, as well as standard shipping that takes 2-3 weeks, for customers who prioritize savings over speed of delivery. Wish’s ‘wheel of fortune’ style game, Blitz Buy, integrates a layer of gamification to offer consumers additional discounts on top-selling items. The Wish application is available for download on iOS and Android and has been the most downloaded shopping app in the United States.
Criticism
Wish has been criticized for listing poor quality or counterfeit goods, a common concern among major e-commerce sites which feature independent sellers. Customers have complained about lack of communication from sellers and quality. As a result, Szulczewski has hired Connie Chang of Facebook to organize a community of about 10,000 Wish users to expose unsatisfactory dealers in exchange for free goods and discounts. It is possible to purchase items from Wish which are illegal in the purchaser's country. In January 2020, a man from Nelson, United Kingdom, was sentenced to 11 months in prison for purchasing a stun gun via Wish.
