When Jet.com sold to Walmart in 2016, commentators remarked that there was no space for new ecommerce apps, in a market with Amazon and eBay.
Two years later, ecommerce platform Wish was the most downloaded shopping application worldwide and the third largest e-commerce marketplace in the United States.
Wish was originally founded as wishlist app, in which users could create lists of their favourite products. To help monetise the site, Wish added a similar products feature and began partnering with merchants to sell on the platform.
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Download NowIt wasn’t long before the sales from partnered merchants far outpaced the pay-per-click advertising model. In 2013, it relaunched the site as an ecommerce platform.
Even from the start, Wish was known for its cheap prices and knock-off goods. It ran a direct-to-consumer model, meaning it had limited control over the supply and quality of the items being delivered.
This has led to accusations of poor quality and counterfeit goods, which Wish has been unable to refute in the past. It has in recent years deployed some quality control systems, with other refund and cancellation protections for consumers.
Anyone that has used Wish will know deals are part of the app’s DNA. Some items are on sale for a supposed 98 percent of the original value, although it’s hard to verify if it was ever on Wish for the original price. Wish also provides a lot of freebies and coupons to users, often offering an item for free as long as the customer pays shipping. Users are entered into prize draws and daily deals. Over 300 million items are available on the Wish store, the majority of which are from China.
Amazon has for over a decade built a delivery platform so sophisticated it can reach anyone in less than two days, on Wish, customers typically wait over two weeks for their package to arrive. The app lends itself well to scrolling, like a social network, far different to Amazon where the customer usually searches for a specific item.
Wish is not close to former-CEO Piotr Szulczewski’s ambition to be the “second or third trillion dollar a year marketplace”, but it has brought a new dimension to shopping online, one that Amazon has somewhat copied with its Prime Day.
The past two years have seen Wish’s growth tumble, as it has lost millions of monthly active buyers. New competitors, such as Pinduoduo’s Temu, are also removing one of the key bit of uniqueness which Wish had in the the United States and Europe.
In 2024, Wish announced it would be acquired by Southeast Asian ecommerce platform Qoo10 for $173 million.
We have collected data and statistics on Wish. Read on below to find out more. Need more insights? Check out our retail app report.
Wish Key Statistics
- Wish generated $278 million revenue in 2023, a decline of 50.8% year-over-year
- In 2023, Wish’s net loss increased to $317 million
- Wish has 12 million monthly active users and approximately 680 million registered users
- Over 200,000 merchants sell on the Wish platform
Retail App Report 2024
Want to learn more about the retail app industry? In our Retail App report, we cover financials, market share, usage, downloads and demographics, with regional and country level breakdowns.
Wish Overview
Title | Title 2 |
---|---|
Launch date | 4 July 2010 |
HQ | San Francisco, California |
People | Joe Yan (CEO), Ying Liu (CFO, COO), Danny Zhang (co-founder) |
Business type | Subsidiary |
Industry | Ecommerce |
Owner | Qoo10 |
Wish Revenue
Wish revenue decreased to $278 million in 2023, a decline of 50.8% year-over-year.
Wish revenue 2019 to 2024 ($mm)
Wish revenue 2015 to 2023 ($bn)
Year | Revenue ($bn) |
---|---|
2015 | 0.3 |
2016 | 0.7 |
2017 | 1 |
2018 | 1.2 |
2019 | 1.9 |
2020 | 2.5 |
2021 | 2 |
2022 | 0.57 |
2023 | 0.28 |
Sources: Company data, Forbes
Wish Profit
Wish reported a net loss of $317 million in 2023, an improvement on the previous year.
Wish net income/loss 2019 to 2023 ($mm)
Year | Net income/loss ($mm) |
---|---|
2019 | -129 |
2020 | -745 |
2021 | -361 |
2022 | -384 |
2023 | -317 |
Source: Company data
Wish Users
Wish monthly active users have declined heavily over the past two years, dropping from 90 million in 2021 to 12 million in 2023.
Wish users 2019 to 2024 (mm)
Wish users 2017 to 2023 (mm)
Year | MAUs (mm) |
---|---|
2017 | 75 |
2018 | 82 |
2019 | 90 |
2020 | 107 |
2021 | 90 |
2022 | 27 |
2023 | 12 |
Wish Registered Users
Wish has 680 million registered users on its platform since it launched.
Wish registered users 2017 to 2023 (mm)
Year | Users (mm) |
---|---|
2017 | 300 |
2018 | 400 |
2019 | 500 |
2020 | 600 |
2021 | 650 |
2022 | 675 |
2023 | 680 |
Sources: Company data, Indigo9Digital, Forbes
Wish Merchants
Wish has about 200,000 merchants that sell items on its platform. It removed a lot of merchants in 2019 due to fake or counterfeit items.
Wish partnered merchants 2018 to 2023
Year | Merchants (mm) |
---|---|
2018 | 0.7 |
2019 | 0.9 |
2020 | 0.5 |
2021 | 0.6 |
2022 | 0.3 |
2023 | 0.2 |
Sources: Company data, Forbes
Wish Valuation
Wish’s valuation peaked just before its IPO, when it was valued at $11.2 billion. Its market cap has declined significantly over the past 24 months.
Wish valuation 2015 to 2023 ($bn)
Year | Valuation ($bn) |
---|---|
2015 | 3 |
2017 | 8.7 |
2019 | 11.2 |
2021 | 8.9 |
2022 | 0.9 |
2023 | 0.1 |
Sources: Crunchbase, Vox
Wish FAQ
- There are over 300 million items available on Wish (Indigo Digital)
- A third of Wish’s total order volume comes from the United States (Forbes)
- Wish was the most downloaded shopping app in the world in 2018 (Forbes)
- It doubled its revenue between 2018 and 2019, from $1 billion to $1.9 billion (Forbes)
- Wish main demographic is young and middle class (Cnet)
- Wish sponsorship of the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly cost between $38 and $42 million per year (Recode)
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