Wish

About

Wish is an e-commerce website and application that handles payments and shipping between manufacturers, mostly Chinese Wholesalers, and customers. Wish is known for selling counterfeit^[4] and under-priced goods.

History

On July 4th, 2010, CEO Peter Szulczewski and co-founder Danny Zhang launched Wish as an app in which users could create wishlists that would trigger the company to order the product from wholesalers. In 2013, Wish^[1] became an e-commerce site in which sellers could host their products.^[2]

In 2015, Amazon offer to buy the company for $10 billion and Wish rejected the offer.^[3]

Features

Wish sells clothing, electronics, beauty products, home decor and baby products. The Wish Outlet and Wish Express are additional services offered for overstocked goods and faster shipping. Customers may provide reviews for products but Wish claims that they are always attempting to remove fake reviews. Many shoppers have posted screenshots of unusual offered products to Reddit and social media.^[5]

In 2018, the subreddit r/WTFwish^[6] launched and has garnered over 20,000 members in a year. The subreddit is filled with screenshots and photoshops of odd items feature on Wish or purchased from wish. On June 16th, 2019, Redditor CtrlAltDelicious posted a screenshot to r/WTFwish^[7] which received over 300 points (99% upvoted) in a month (shown below, left). On July 15th, Redditor Bronzo27 posted another screenshot to r/dankmemes^[8] (shown below, right).

Highlights

YouTube Reviews and Hauls

In 2018, Wish reviews and hauls became a popular video category on YouTube. On March 1st, 2019, YouTuber Safiya Nygaard uploaded a video titled, "I Tried Wedding Dresses From Wish" (shown below, left). The video gained over 13.8 million views and 361,000 likes in four months. On April 21st, YouTuber Mia Maples uploaded a Wish haul video that received over 1.5 million views and 49,000 likes in three months (shown below, right).

Photoshops

In July 2019, Redditors and Instagram users began posting edited wish offers in the nobody format to emphasize the strange products already offer on the site. On July 18th, Redditor smartboijimi posted a fake wish offering to r/dankmemes^[9] and received over 28,200 points (97% upvoted) in a day (shown below, left). That same day, Redditor wordwhazzle posted another fake wish offering photoshop to r/memes^[10] which gained over 60 points (89% upvoted) in a day (shown below, right).

Traffic

In 2013, Szulczewski reported that "500,000 people visit the app each day, spending an average of 29 minutes over five to 10 sessions. The vast majority are women, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25. A little more than a third of those people live outside the U.S. and Canada." In 2018, Wish became the world’s most-downloaded e-commerce app of the year with 161 million installs globally.

Search Interest

External References