> 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.
>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.
I know you’re skeptical and I would be too if I hadn’t heard of this before but it’s actually true. Planet money has two really good podcasts about exactly this topic. Here’s a link:
I've previously critiqued the mighty mug example. It has the exact issue I pointed to above - comparing the US retail rate to an international sorted rate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21073682
Your claim was disproved back then and it's still false now. You were comparing the shipping rates for someone who does all the sorting and long haul delivery vs China, who just dumps all the mail at the Port of Los Angeles, sorted into buckets by zip code.
My understanding is Amazon roughly passes through their costs on FBA. Regardless, I pointed at the cost that anyone who ships reasonable volume and does similar sorting to China Post can access.
I was not doing a comparison, I was showing how the NPR numbers were dishonest. NPR claims that it costs $6.30 to mail something across the street. They never give a specific number for a shipment from China to compare to.
Prices have gone up since then, but even today the most expensive option with no pre-sorting for 13 oz is only $5.39. It can go as low as $2.36 depending on the level of sorting.
NPR is clearly not doing an apples to apples comparison, and nobody has tried to defend them, they just attacked the numbers I sourced.
Now, you're saying that China does full pre-sorting to the zip code level but doesn't deliver to the closest location. This is roughly equivalent to the 5-digit DNDC option, which currently costs $3.56 - maybe slightly more because I don't know the exact details of how China delivers to the US. And it was lower at the time of the NPR article, which claimed the domestic price would be $6.30.
> This is roughly equivalent to the 5-digit DNDC option, which currently costs $3.56 - maybe slightly more because I don't know the exact details of how China delivers to the US.
China the country does that, but that cost is not borne by the shipper in China. The shipper in China just drops the item off at their post office.
But regardless, China then pays the US $1.90 to deliver that package for them. You will not find any service available to a US mailer that is only $1.90.
This [0] has numbers from 2015, which are older, and it doesn't have a full breakdown, but it says that 200 grams (or around 7 oz) would cost $2.67 as the cheapest option through China Post. The next option is 500 grams which is 17 oz, at $6.67. 13 oz would probably be somewhere in the middle. And of course US prices have gone up since 2015.
From the rates that I've seen, I don't see how they can possibly represent the real cost of shipping some of these items. They aren't injected into the USPS system close enough to the destination to be comparable to something like SmartPost for example.
I was a wish customer for hobby shopping (was :)) , and noticed the inflated shipping price change around start of the year (feb-mar 2020)(previously $1 shipping --> $3 shipping) and that was one of the reasons for me to leave that platform..
It used to be possible to get some cheap widgets on Aliexpress for $1. Even if you assume that the widget is "free", $1 seems like a great rate for shipping. Do bulk rates in the US compare with that?
Many years ago it was possible, not recently. UPU rates used to be lower before 2015 or so.
Also, for small, light products, it's absolutely possible to ship below $1. Full 5-digit pre-sorting and injection for a 1 oz flat costs 43 cents to deliver currently. Presorting but with no injection costs 81 cents.
That’s not really the ethos of this community. If you make a claim, you should provide context to back it up. Asking someone else to do your research and closing with “I’m not going to spoon feed you” isn’t how HN works.
I've done the research several times when I've seen people making specific claims with specific prices, and each time I found it to be false.
The cheapest USPS shipping for your dimensions and weight is $2.05 currently with parcel lightweight and sorting. Now what product is that size that you're comparing to? Note that the thickness here is important, as anything less than 3/4 inches thick can generally be sent in a flat envelope for considerably cheaper.
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.
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.
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.
I don't get why you picked AirBnB for this analogy -- AirBnB invented a whole new industry, they aren't just a layer on top of existing tools. Dropbox I think fits, so does Snowflake.
Yeah, might be okay for small overseas businesses to ignore economic nexus of US states, but I am sure some states will eventually go to great lengths to get their hands on big liabilities built up by big companies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The "fuel filters" mentioned are firearm suppressors that are generally illegally used. Some times the filter is something that actually resembles a filter, sometimes it doesn't look at all like it would do much as a filter. Sometimes it's just an adapter that allows you to screw a real automotive oil filter onto the end of a gun. The other name for them is "solvent traps" which is some sort of cylindrical container thing you are supposed to attach to the end of the gun to collect a cleaning solvent that you pour through the barrel. No one really cleans a gun like this, you use the solvent on a swab attached to a metal cleaning rod. The internals just so happen to look like a typical suppressor but there is no exit hole for the bullet which you are supposed to drill yourself. Some even have a punch mark where the hole should to help align the drill. The illegal act is drilling that hole without filling out the ATF paperwork and paying the tax but even just possessing the "filter" or "solvent trap" might land you in hot water with the feds if they could make the case that you would have no use for such a device other than to make an unregistered suppressor.
The auto switches are drop-in mechanical pieces for a gun to convert it into burst fire or fully automatic, skirting laws, taxes, and registration. I don't remember the incognito name they use for these but there are very specific designs used for specific guns so once you see a picture, it's obvious what it actually is. Because these things are so specific in how they are built, there's pretty much no way you could escape conviction if you owned one and it was not registered. The feds could just say it looks like an auto switch and if you can't prove that it existed before the automatic weapons ban, then you are breaking the law.
It's not really a fuel filter. Or technically it is, but it's really a suppressor kit sold as a fuel filter. You may also hear them called or sold as "solvent traps". This is largely because a suppressor is largely a safety and convenience device, but acquiring one legally is a painful, multi-month process with a $200 tax. You can make one legally by filing a form 1, but it is generally understood that the wish.com "solvent traps" or "fuel filters" will not necessarily be used legally.
And I'm with you - I probably wouldn't want to put a wish.com-sourced fuel filter on a firearm any more than I'd want to put it on any machinery.
lol, I have a stake in a small brick and mortar store and I recently had a plumber in looking up an electric water heater on wish.com and say "i could order you this and fit it when it arrives next month" - I honestly thought he was going to come back and tell me I had been on a candid camera show - don't know whether it's terrifying or hilarious. It cemented in my head the idea that anyone who orders something from wish.com is a halfwit
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.
Last year me and a friend played a game of "wishing". Spend $30-50 on cheap crap on Wish, and the shipping is so slow that you end up getting surprises in the mail the rest of the year.
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.
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.
A company whose revenue is primarily derived from a technology characterized by high margin, high scalability and low fixed costs. One could also say that such a technology should be the primary differentiator for the product. The products therefore tend towards software and hardware as applied to a pre-existing market, but that's not an ironclad rule.
So for example not Tesla (high fixed costs, low margin), not Uber (negative margin), and not Amazon (the retail part is low margin; AWS actually fits).
And things like Wish clearly only if we're talking gross margin, not operating margins. The amount of ads they're running is crazy.
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.
And what's the use of that point? If people say X and many understand it means Y, even though by a dictionary/older meaning it can mean Z, being pedantic and trying to fight the natural language shift doesn't really help anyone.
> Do you know of any publicly traded companies that split out IT in their financials?
No, you'd have to be familiar with their internal practices. But let's be honest, you're just being pedantic now. It's fairly obvious from the outside which companies are "tech" companies.
> Do you consider Apple, which builds consumer electronics (e.g. hardware engineering) a tech company?
First of all, about 25% of their revenue comes from software services, and iPhone is the only segment with more sales. More than 1/2 of their profit (because the gross margins are much higher) come from software services, so Apple is probably a bad example.
But yes, of course they are a tech company. One of the first.
> It's fairly obvious from the outside which companies are "tech" companies.
It it though? You'll find a bunch of replies here with disagreements about what "tech" companies actually are, so how is that obvious?
> But let's be honest, you're just being pedantic now.
And I think you're being too obtuse. It's one thing to refer to "tech companies" as a general colloquialism (I do), but if you're going to try to start counting them, I think the distinction is important. You'll find pretty quickly that many companies started in the last 10 years will just call themselves tech companies (Nikola, WeWork, Palantir, etc. come to mind) but have slight variations on revenue generated from software services.
My bigger point here, as I've pointed out in other threads is that "tech" isn't a market - its an operating model. It's one to thing colloquially say "this is a tech company", but then when someone says "how do we count how many tech companies do X" then we start to get into a whole bunch of grey areas about how to measure something...hence my original comment.
> But yes, of course they are a tech company. One of the first.
It's a bad example, but it's still a tech company? I think you just proved my point :)
> It it though? You'll find a bunch of replies here with disagreements about what "tech" companies actually are, so how is that obvious?
I see a bunch of posts with definitions that are not well thought out and counterexamples. I haven't seen any counterexamples from my definition. Tesla, Uber, and Amazon all fall under tech in my definition. Starbucks does not, because their dev team is part of IT. They still do great tech work, but they aren't a tech company.
> It's a bad example, but it's still a tech company? I think you just proved my point :)
It was only a bad example because you were misinformed on their revenue model. I was saying it was a bad choice for you to use as an example because it is so obviously a tech company.
> but then when someone says "how do we count how many tech companies do X" then we start to get into a whole bunch of grey areas about how to measure something
There are many unmeasurable things, but we still measure them and look for trends. If I dump a pile of sand on your desk, and then another pile of sand that takes more space, the number of grains of sand is effectively immeasurable but it doesn't matter, we can still see the trend of bigger piles of sand.
You don't need a precise definition to look for trends, and we are talking about trends here. More tech IPOs than last year. We don't need a precise definition of what a tech IPO is to see a trend.
If every human stopped working at the company for a day the product would still work (not a meatspace product). The company will typically have a high GAAP gross margin.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant.
It’s just missing the fact that the popularity of posting S-1’s in general might be changing so charting the # of posts may be different than the real # of “tech ipos”
this is probably a "backloaded" year given what happened to the stock market earlier in the year.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 .'
Ha, the other day I was looking into how to report the page, and decided it wasn't worth the effort and probably would never be seen by a human. The power of HN!
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.
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.
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).
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.
"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."
So many of these new S-1s are unprofitable, where does the money all go?
I'm beginning to wonder if entire unicorn ecosystem is just a funnel to subsidize ad / infrastructure / payment rail revenues at the leading providers.
There's little reason for a company owners to dilute their holdings with an S-1, if they are already profitable and don't have huge investments planned ahead.
Woah I had never considered that before. I bet there are tons of private companies out there just absolutely printing profits for a small number of internal shareholders that we just don't really know about.
Did you miss the part where it said that it's been net profitable? "net cumulative cash flow from operations of $16 million from January 1, 2017 to September 30, 2020"
That part does not mean what you think it means. Cash flow, negative working capital and profitability are separate things. In the end, they are generating loss.
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.
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.
Shopify is a service provider, it's not a platform because it doesn't control the relationship with the consumer. Wish is an aggregator on both sides and that's why it's a platform.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.