15 ms·

Wish S-1

123 points by xoxoy 6y ago

d3nj4l 6y ago
As expected, the threat of reputational damage from counterfeit goods features pretty heavily in the IPO. Unfortunately, that damage has already been done. At the moment, 8 of the top 10 results for "wish.com" on YouTube are people exposing scams. Not really a good look for the company.
- dmurray 6y ago
  Do they have a reputation for quality to uphold? I expect them to be cheap and innovative, but not high quality. I'd expect the genuine Wish product to be just as flimsy as whatever knockoff.
  - simias 6y ago
    Agreed, I don't think people expect quality from wish.com, it's just consumerism gone wild basically. I doubt most people expect quality from them. I'd argue that counterfeits are a much bigger problem for a company like Amazon that people actually use for "qualitative" purchases.
  - 55555 6y ago
    > innovative What? How?
    - panzagl 6y ago
      You know, ignoring laws and abusing workers innovative, like a rideshare service or Amazon.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Yeah, when I think of wish.com, I usually think of "fuel filters" or auto switches. Not exactly a reputation for quality.
  - tgtweak 6y ago
    I think of the terrible-lady-getting-excited-over-a-box youtube ad :| 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.
    - JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
      The first time I heard of Wish was when they bought the Lakers jersey ad. > Wish will pay the organization between $12 million and $14 million a year for the length of the three-year contract, according to a source who wasn't authorized to share the numbers publicly. I just now surfed to the website to see what they even sell and it won’t let me see a single bit of the website without signing up. Genius plan.
      - graaben 6y ago
        I know your goal isn't to actually browse the site but you can get around the sign up modal by adding ?hide_login_modal=true to the URL
  - dumbfounder 6y ago
    I have no idea what you mean by this. 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.
- pontus 6y ago
  I have bought a few items off of wish, and each time I have been astounded at the crap I got. I mean, it was dirt cheap so I don't know what I was expecting. Honestly surprised that the business is still going, let alone going public.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I'm not sure how international it is, but a fairly well known german insult for something of terrible quality is "When you buy X from Wish".
xoxoy 6y ago
I just downloaded the app again to refresh my memory on what it looked like since I had never actually bought anything off it. 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.
- vdfs 6y ago
  foot stickers do work, i tried one and grow 6 inch, problem is when you remove them you are back to your previous height
  - avsteele 6y ago
    Thank you for this.
  - samstave 6y ago
    Foot Stickers of Growth +6 Just be glad you identified them first and didn’t put on cursed ones.
soniman 6y ago
"Our growth has been highly capital efficient. We have been able to achieve this massive growth and scale by having net cumulative cash flow from operations of $16 million from January 1, 2017 to September 30, 2020, aided by our positive cash float, where we receive an upfront payment from a user, and remit payment to a merchant a number of weeks later. In 2019, we generated a net loss of $129 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(127) million, compared to a net loss of $208 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(211) million in 2018, and a net loss of $207 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(135) million in 2017. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we generated a net loss of $176 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(99) million, compared to a net loss of $5 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(11) million for the nine months ended September 30, 2019."
- soniman 6y ago
  Assuming run rate revenues of around $2.5B, I assume this will be valued around 15x revenues, so $37.5 billion. Just a wild guess.
  - adventured 6y ago
    Overstock is going for ~1.4 times sales (and that's 3x inflated versus May due to OSTK recently joining the bubble party). If by some miracle Wish gets 15x, they'll be a spectacular short opportunity.
    - soniman 6y ago
      Wish was valued at $11 billion in the last VC round in 2019. Since then Shopify is up 200% so if Wish is being valued off Shopify then $37.5 billion isn't far off. Shop's price to sales is 50x so 15x isn't outrageous for Wish. Shop is growing faster but Wish's economics are better.
      - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
        > https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds... But Wish is in a retailer vs Shopify as a platform. I Highly doubt wish has the same value. In fact, I don't know a single instance of someone shopping wish and being satisfied. Someone will buy it, it'll probably be way over valued, and it will eventually drop back.
figgyc 6y ago
> We continue to expand our merchant base around the world. The number of merchants on our platform in North America, Europe, and Latin America has grown approximately 234% since 2019. In particular, the number of merchants on our platform in the United States has grown approximately 268% since 2019. Through our diversified and global merchant base, we are able to offer greater depth and breadth of categories and products. For example, in 2019, four out of the top 10 selling merchants on our platform were located in the United States selling refurbished electronics, beauty products, and hobby items, which illustrates the ongoing diversification of our merchant base and product categories. 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.
luxurytent 6y ago
Huh, I've never heard of this but went to the home page and it sells .. junk? Some of the products remind me of those "THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK" ads
- haunter 6y ago
  It's not selling goods for SV people Basically an Aliexpress clone with cheap chinese stuff
  - xienze 6y ago
    I think it's slightly different from that. My understanding is that a lot of stuff on there is marked as legitimate brand name goods that aren't what they purport to be at all. The example that stuck out to me are the countless YouTube videos where someone buys what is claimed to be a, e.g. GTX 1080 for $50 that's really some ancient card with the BIOS flashed to _report_ that it's a 1080. Stuff like that seems to be the MO of wish.com.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Yes they sell very low-end stuff. That’s their market.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  It's an online dollar store, meant to give the experience of consumerism to poor people, who otherwise wouldn't have enough money to participate.
  - hakfoo 6y ago
    In principle, there's nothing wrong with the online dollar store concept. It's not even a "poor people" thing, it's remembering there are products that make sense to buy at the dollar store, and ones that don't. 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.
jonplackett 6y ago
Is it just me or are there multiple S-1's on here almost every day at the moment? Is there glut of them or are they just overly represented on HN at the moment?
- ip_addr 6y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/06/why-startups-are-going-public-now/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/06/why-startups-are-going-pub...
- marc__1 6y ago
  IPOs priced per year 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 [1]https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center
  - jtsiskin 6y ago
    Is there any change in the number of tech IPOs specifically?
    - mbesto 6y ago
      Define a "tech IPO" for me. I'll wait.
      - H8crilA 6y ago
        It's "the companies that we like". Simple. /s
      - adjkant 6y ago
        Know this mostly isn't looking for an answer, but I think HN typically means something along the lines of: "one with a significant development arm of their employees/business that is crucial to the company's success" So any company run off an app or website that's complex and well made is probably a "tech company" even if it's in the business of cars, e-commerce, or widgets. There's no hard and fast rule here of course, but we don't need to pretend we don't know the gist of what people actually mean, even if "tech company" is a misnomer in many ways.
jackfrodo 6y ago
The tolerance of counterfeits is really such a bummer. And it's not just Wish. Amazon has their fair share of counterfeits as well. These "Airpods"[0] are cheap knockoffs, but the images say that they're Airpod Pros. This listing is on the first page of results when you search for Airpods on Amazon. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds-Cancelling/dp/B08LMDZF93/ https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > (from listing) https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71RExoJxCeL._AC_SL1500_.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71RExoJxCeL... 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?
- joshumax 6y ago
  Some of the reviews also seem comically fake, take for example this 5 star review for the "Airpod Pros": '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 .'
- jdndbfbf 6y ago
  Those aren't even fake. They don't list apple as the brand. They don't use the apple logo. The only "fake" thing is using "for airpods" in the product title.
  - jackfrodo 6y ago
    Check out the third image. Clearly calls them Airpod Pro.
- thekyle 6y ago
  Seems to be deleted now
julianlam 6y ago
Don't exactly know why one would invest in what is essentially a digital flea market. Spend your money at the flea market, don't invest in one. All stories I've heard about Wish involve products arriving past the expected date, and a refund being issued.
brd529 6y ago
> Historically, our merchants in China have benefitted from lower shipping costs due to the Universal Postal Union Treaty (“UPU”). Certain expected changes to UPU postal rates that went into effect in July 2020 are likely to increase the shipping rates our merchants incur to ship products from China. The actions we have taken in our logistics program to mitigate these increased costs may not be successful over the long term. If there are increases in shipping costs, the sales price of products on our platform could increase, which could reduce the volume of transaction activity on our platform to decrease and may consequently have a negative impact on our results of operations. 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.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  >Thanks to the UPU, Before July it was cheaper to mail a package to Chicago from Shanghai than to shop to Chicago from Dallas. 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.
  - jdndbfbf 6y ago
    The reverse is true. Shanghai to Chicago is cheaper than Chicago to Dallas. Trump said he was going to get rid of the subsidies but he never did.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      I'll ask again for a source. It should at minimum lay out the size and weight of the package, so I can verify the actual cost.
aminozuur 6y ago
I always thought of Wish as an AliExpres front, doing drop-shipping at higher prices. Therefore, I've never used it myself. I might be wrong. Are there good reasons for why someone would recommend their loved ones to use Wish over AliExpress?
- rwmj 6y ago
  My credit card company (in the UK) has blocked AliExpress but not Wish. This doesn't make me want to use Wish, but maybe it's a reason why others would prefer it over AliExpress.
  - jayrot 6y ago
    > My credit card company (in the UK) has blocked AliExpress That's completely outrageous. What could their rationale possibly be?
    - Goz3rr 6y ago
      Too many chargebacks perhaps?
- decko 6y ago
  I've used both. Wish often has free shipping but slightly higher prices (or free product with higher shipping), but occasionally will still be cheaper than AliExpress.
H8crilA 6y ago
Another S-1 where all gross profit is being spent on ads: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1822250/000119312520298630/d82777ds1.htm#fin82777_3 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.
dyeje 6y ago
This company is the epitome of trashy consumerism.
- 0goel0 6y ago
  Perfect match for the US. :) But I'm all seriousness, everything I've seen on wish in the last has been cheap, low-quality garbage.
totaldude87 6y ago
I use wish for buying gadgets with dead beat prices, with full awareness that a) it wont last b) its just a cheap hobby.. c) never buy a product which looks sketchy as hell ( ex : a $50 quad cam, full hd , 120 hz display mobile) 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
- f0ff 6y ago
  Buying stuff is not a hobby.
  - roel_v 6y ago
    Says who?
- solarkraft 6y ago
  But isn't Aliexpress usually a more trustworthy source (they actually have mechanisms to prevent scams and ensure quality)?
m1117 6y ago
So many tech companies doing IPOs. I hope it's not going to lead us to the next bubble.
- cabraca 6y ago
  a lot of those IPOs are Investors and Founders cashing out before everything goes boom.
rossdavidh 6y ago
When a company like Wish is cashing out, this feels like a top?
earthtobishop 6y ago
I totally get the Wish hate but I don’t think most here realize why it’s so popular. 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.
- echelon 6y ago
  This perspective makes it sound like the internet equivalent of Dollar Tree or Dollar General.
  - askafriend 6y ago
    That's exactly my perception of Wish.
    - nunez 6y ago
      and Dollar General is one of the most successful retailers, even today. So a Wish IPO definitely makes sense.
  - earthtobishop 6y ago
    It is.
- jayrot 6y ago
  > My dad was able to get a quality DSLR for $50. No he wasn't.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - earthtobishop 6y ago
Temasik 6y ago
shit company (too lazy to write)
scottisbrave84 6y ago
I read it. It's legit. I would add 25%%%
whoisjuan 6y ago
If there's one IPO that I'm not excited about, is this one. This is a shit model. And I want to apologize in advance to any Wish employees that may be here and that are surely doing hard work to build the logistics and consumer layers of this business. 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.
- switch11 6y ago
  How is this different from Amazon or Wal Mart -> 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.
- jiveturkey 6y ago
  > just a fancy wrapper on top of AliExpress and dropbox is just a fancy wrapper on top of ... and airbnb is just a fancy wrapper on top of ...
  - belval 6y ago
    Dropbox and AirBnB had the added value of being simpler use than whatever they replaced. 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.
    - sushid 6y ago
      Wish has their own warehousing and inventorying as well though. It’s not a pure AliExpress wrapper. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not a fan of Wish.
screye 6y ago
Looking at wish, I just had an idea for another startup model. "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.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I think one of the things that come closest to this are european-style brands on Aliexpress (Blitzwolf comes to mind) that pretty certainly don't do any R&D but are building reputatíons for only putting their badge on products of decent quality. 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).
- xyzzy123 6y ago
  Honestly this is what many of the brands you are familiar with already are. 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.
jedberg 6y ago
One of my friends works for Wish, so I hate to rant on them, but I've never had a good experience with them. I've bought two items from Wish now. 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.
viro 6y ago
this company is pure trash
carlineng 6y ago
From p153: > 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?
- raiyu 6y ago
  This is the same as Blue Apron that had heavy marketing spend to acquire new customers because old customers were churning very quickly. 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.

123 points by xoxoy 6y ago

As expected, the threat of reputational damage from counterfeit goods features pretty heavily in the IPO. Unfortunately, that damage has already been done. At the moment, 8 of the top 10 results for "wish.com" on YouTube are people exposing scams. Not really a good look for the company.

dmurray 6y ago
Do they have a reputation for quality to uphold? I expect them to be cheap and innovative, but not high quality. I'd expect the genuine Wish product to be just as flimsy as whatever knockoff.
- simias 6y ago
  Agreed, I don't think people expect quality from wish.com, it's just consumerism gone wild basically. I doubt most people expect quality from them. I'd argue that counterfeits are a much bigger problem for a company like Amazon that people actually use for "qualitative" purchases.
- 55555 6y ago
  > innovative What? How?
  - panzagl 6y ago
    You know, ignoring laws and abusing workers innovative, like a rideshare service or Amazon.
da_big_ghey 6y ago
Yeah, when I think of wish.com, I usually think of "fuel filters" or auto switches. Not exactly a reputation for quality.
- tgtweak 6y ago
  I think of the terrible-lady-getting-excited-over-a-box youtube ad :| 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.
  - JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
    The first time I heard of Wish was when they bought the Lakers jersey ad. > Wish will pay the organization between $12 million and $14 million a year for the length of the three-year contract, according to a source who wasn't authorized to share the numbers publicly. I just now surfed to the website to see what they even sell and it won’t let me see a single bit of the website without signing up. Genius plan.
    - graaben 6y ago
      I know your goal isn't to actually browse the site but you can get around the sign up modal by adding ?hide_login_modal=true to the URL
- dumbfounder 6y ago
  I have no idea what you mean by this. 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.
pontus 6y ago
I have bought a few items off of wish, and each time I have been astounded at the crap I got. I mean, it was dirt cheap so I don't know what I was expecting. Honestly surprised that the business is still going, let alone going public.
solarkraft 6y ago
I'm not sure how international it is, but a fairly well known german insult for something of terrible quality is "When you buy X from Wish".

xoxoy 6y ago

I just downloaded the app again to refresh my memory on what it looked like since I had never actually bought anything off it. 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.

vdfs 6y ago
foot stickers do work, i tried one and grow 6 inch, problem is when you remove them you are back to your previous height
- avsteele 6y ago
  Thank you for this.
- samstave 6y ago
  Foot Stickers of Growth +6 Just be glad you identified them first and didn’t put on cursed ones.

soniman 6y ago

"Our growth has been highly capital efficient. We have been able to achieve this massive growth and scale by having net cumulative cash flow from operations of $16 million from January 1, 2017 to September 30, 2020, aided by our positive cash float, where we receive an upfront payment from a user, and remit payment to a merchant a number of weeks later. In 2019, we generated a net loss of $129 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(127) million, compared to a net loss of $208 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(211) million in 2018, and a net loss of $207 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(135) million in 2017. For the nine months ended September 30, 2020, we generated a net loss of $176 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(99) million, compared to a net loss of $5 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(11) million for the nine months ended September 30, 2019."

soniman 6y ago
Assuming run rate revenues of around $2.5B, I assume this will be valued around 15x revenues, so $37.5 billion. Just a wild guess.
- adventured 6y ago
  Overstock is going for ~1.4 times sales (and that's 3x inflated versus May due to OSTK recently joining the bubble party). If by some miracle Wish gets 15x, they'll be a spectacular short opportunity.
  - soniman 6y ago
    Wish was valued at $11 billion in the last VC round in 2019. Since then Shopify is up 200% so if Wish is being valued off Shopify then $37.5 billion isn't far off. Shop's price to sales is 50x so 15x isn't outrageous for Wish. Shop is growing faster but Wish's economics are better.
    - ganoushoreilly 6y ago
      > https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds... But Wish is in a retailer vs Shopify as a platform. I Highly doubt wish has the same value. In fact, I don't know a single instance of someone shopping wish and being satisfied. Someone will buy it, it'll probably be way over valued, and it will eventually drop back.

figgyc 6y ago

> We continue to expand our merchant base around the world. The number of merchants on our platform in North America, Europe, and Latin America has grown approximately 234% since 2019. In particular, the number of merchants on our platform in the United States has grown approximately 268% since 2019. Through our diversified and global merchant base, we are able to offer greater depth and breadth of categories and products. For example, in 2019, four out of the top 10 selling merchants on our platform were located in the United States selling refurbished electronics, beauty products, and hobby items, which illustrates the ongoing diversification of our merchant base and product categories. 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.

luxurytent 6y ago

Huh, I've never heard of this but went to the home page and it sells .. junk? Some of the products remind me of those "THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK" ads

haunter 6y ago
It's not selling goods for SV people Basically an Aliexpress clone with cheap chinese stuff
- xienze 6y ago
  I think it's slightly different from that. My understanding is that a lot of stuff on there is marked as legitimate brand name goods that aren't what they purport to be at all. The example that stuck out to me are the countless YouTube videos where someone buys what is claimed to be a, e.g. GTX 1080 for $50 that's really some ancient card with the BIOS flashed to _report_ that it's a 1080. Stuff like that seems to be the MO of wish.com.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Yes they sell very low-end stuff. That’s their market.
jbob2000 6y ago
It's an online dollar store, meant to give the experience of consumerism to poor people, who otherwise wouldn't have enough money to participate.
- hakfoo 6y ago
  In principle, there's nothing wrong with the online dollar store concept. It's not even a "poor people" thing, it's remembering there are products that make sense to buy at the dollar store, and ones that don't. 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.

jonplackett 6y ago

Is it just me or are there multiple S-1's on here almost every day at the moment? Is there glut of them or are they just overly represented on HN at the moment?

ip_addr 6y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/06/why-startups-are-going-public-now/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/06/why-startups-are-going-pub...
marc__1 6y ago
IPOs priced per year 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 [1]https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  Is there any change in the number of tech IPOs specifically?
  - mbesto 6y ago
    Define a "tech IPO" for me. I'll wait.
    - H8crilA 6y ago
      It's "the companies that we like". Simple. /s
    - adjkant 6y ago
      Know this mostly isn't looking for an answer, but I think HN typically means something along the lines of: "one with a significant development arm of their employees/business that is crucial to the company's success" So any company run off an app or website that's complex and well made is probably a "tech company" even if it's in the business of cars, e-commerce, or widgets. There's no hard and fast rule here of course, but we don't need to pretend we don't know the gist of what people actually mean, even if "tech company" is a misnomer in many ways.

jackfrodo 6y ago

The tolerance of counterfeits is really such a bummer. And it's not just Wish. Amazon has their fair share of counterfeits as well. These "Airpods"[0] are cheap knockoffs, but the images say that they're Airpod Pros. This listing is on the first page of results when you search for Airpods on Amazon. [0]https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds-Cancelling/dp/B08LMDZF93/ https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Headphones-Bluetooth-Earbuds...

ethbr0 6y ago
> (from listing) https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71RExoJxCeL._AC_SL1500_.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71RExoJxCeL... 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?
joshumax 6y ago
Some of the reviews also seem comically fake, take for example this 5 star review for the "Airpod Pros": '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 .'
jdndbfbf 6y ago
Those aren't even fake. They don't list apple as the brand. They don't use the apple logo. The only "fake" thing is using "for airpods" in the product title.
- jackfrodo 6y ago
  Check out the third image. Clearly calls them Airpod Pro.
thekyle 6y ago
Seems to be deleted now

julianlam 6y ago

Don't exactly know why one would invest in what is essentially a digital flea market. Spend your money at the flea market, don't invest in one. All stories I've heard about Wish involve products arriving past the expected date, and a refund being issued.

brd529 6y ago

> Historically, our merchants in China have benefitted from lower shipping costs due to the Universal Postal Union Treaty (“UPU”). Certain expected changes to UPU postal rates that went into effect in July 2020 are likely to increase the shipping rates our merchants incur to ship products from China. The actions we have taken in our logistics program to mitigate these increased costs may not be successful over the long term. If there are increases in shipping costs, the sales price of products on our platform could increase, which could reduce the volume of transaction activity on our platform to decrease and may consequently have a negative impact on our results of operations. 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.

ikeboy 6y ago
>Thanks to the UPU, Before July it was cheaper to mail a package to Chicago from Shanghai than to shop to Chicago from Dallas. 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.
- jdndbfbf 6y ago
  The reverse is true. Shanghai to Chicago is cheaper than Chicago to Dallas. Trump said he was going to get rid of the subsidies but he never did.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    I'll ask again for a source. It should at minimum lay out the size and weight of the package, so I can verify the actual cost.

aminozuur 6y ago

I always thought of Wish as an AliExpres front, doing drop-shipping at higher prices. Therefore, I've never used it myself. I might be wrong. Are there good reasons for why someone would recommend their loved ones to use Wish over AliExpress?

rwmj 6y ago
My credit card company (in the UK) has blocked AliExpress but not Wish. This doesn't make me want to use Wish, but maybe it's a reason why others would prefer it over AliExpress.
- jayrot 6y ago
  > My credit card company (in the UK) has blocked AliExpress That's completely outrageous. What could their rationale possibly be?
  - Goz3rr 6y ago
    Too many chargebacks perhaps?
decko 6y ago
I've used both. Wish often has free shipping but slightly higher prices (or free product with higher shipping), but occasionally will still be cheaper than AliExpress.

H8crilA 6y ago

Another S-1 where all gross profit is being spent on ads: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1822250/000119312520298630/d82777ds1.htm#fin82777_3 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.

dyeje 6y ago

This company is the epitome of trashy consumerism.

0goel0 6y ago
Perfect match for the US. :) But I'm all seriousness, everything I've seen on wish in the last has been cheap, low-quality garbage.

totaldude87 6y ago

I use wish for buying gadgets with dead beat prices, with full awareness that a) it wont last b) its just a cheap hobby.. c) never buy a product which looks sketchy as hell ( ex : a $50 quad cam, full hd , 120 hz display mobile) 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

f0ff 6y ago
Buying stuff is not a hobby.
- roel_v 6y ago
  Says who?
solarkraft 6y ago
But isn't Aliexpress usually a more trustworthy source (they actually have mechanisms to prevent scams and ensure quality)?

m1117 6y ago

So many tech companies doing IPOs. I hope it's not going to lead us to the next bubble.

cabraca 6y ago
a lot of those IPOs are Investors and Founders cashing out before everything goes boom.

rossdavidh 6y ago

When a company like Wish is cashing out, this feels like a top?

earthtobishop 6y ago

I totally get the Wish hate but I don’t think most here realize why it’s so popular. 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.

echelon 6y ago
This perspective makes it sound like the internet equivalent of Dollar Tree or Dollar General.
- askafriend 6y ago
  That's exactly my perception of Wish.
  - nunez 6y ago
    and Dollar General is one of the most successful retailers, even today. So a Wish IPO definitely makes sense.
- earthtobishop 6y ago
  It is.
jayrot 6y ago
> My dad was able to get a quality DSLR for $50. No he wasn't.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- earthtobishop 6y ago

Temasik 6y ago

shit company (too lazy to write)

scottisbrave84 6y ago

I read it. It's legit. I would add 25%%%

whoisjuan 6y ago

If there's one IPO that I'm not excited about, is this one. This is a shit model. And I want to apologize in advance to any Wish employees that may be here and that are surely doing hard work to build the logistics and consumer layers of this business. 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.

switch11 6y ago
How is this different from Amazon or Wal Mart -> 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.
jiveturkey 6y ago
> just a fancy wrapper on top of AliExpress and dropbox is just a fancy wrapper on top of ... and airbnb is just a fancy wrapper on top of ...
- belval 6y ago
  Dropbox and AirBnB had the added value of being simpler use than whatever they replaced. 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.
  - sushid 6y ago
    Wish has their own warehousing and inventorying as well though. It’s not a pure AliExpress wrapper. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not a fan of Wish.

screye 6y ago

Looking at wish, I just had an idea for another startup model. "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.

solarkraft 6y ago
I think one of the things that come closest to this are european-style brands on Aliexpress (Blitzwolf comes to mind) that pretty certainly don't do any R&D but are building reputatíons for only putting their badge on products of decent quality. 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).
xyzzy123 6y ago
Honestly this is what many of the brands you are familiar with already are. 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.

jedberg 6y ago

One of my friends works for Wish, so I hate to rant on them, but I've never had a good experience with them. I've bought two items from Wish now. 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.

viro 6y ago

this company is pure trash

carlineng 6y ago

From p153: > 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?

raiyu 6y ago
This is the same as Blue Apron that had heavy marketing spend to acquire new customers because old customers were churning very quickly. 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.