Wish was suddenly sold, and a generation of heroes came to an end!

On the third day of the Chinese New Year, a bombshell was dropped on the cross-border e-commerce circle: Wish, one of the four major cross-border e-commerce platforms, was "sold". Thus ended a generation of heroes.

Wish will sell

Many important news are released late at night, and the time chosen by Wish this time is also intriguing. At 11 o'clock last night, Wish released the following important news on its official WeChat public account.

You read that right. Wish, which was once known as one of the four major cross-border e-commerce platforms along with Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress, has been sold. The acquirer is Qoo10.

It is reported that Qoo10, headquartered in Singapore, is an extremely popular e-commerce website among young people, famous for selling the latest popular products such as Korean cosmetics and natural foods. Qoo10 sells a wide variety of products, including fashion, beauty, daily necessities, food and beverages, entertainment, electronic ticketing, etc., and is especially popular among female users aged 18 to 39.

In addition, many people may not think that Qoo10 is an e-commerce platform under eBay. The platform is a Japanese online market operated by eBay Japan LLC and started providing services in June 2010. As the leading cross-border e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, as of 2023, it has more than 23 million registered members, more than 21,000 stores, 1.2 billion products, and 520 million monthly page views.

Qoo10's acquisition of Wish is actually eBay's acquisition of Wish.

According to the news, once the acquisition is completed, Wish will officially become part of the Qoo10 business line, and the transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2024. Before that, the Wish brand and platform will operate as usual, and the sellers' terms of service and Wish contact information will remain unchanged.

This news made the Wish seller communication group, which had been silent for a long time, very lively. Some sellers noticed the official news as soon as Wish released it, and many sellers said it was too sudden and too shocking. However, some sellers also said that this was expected. After all, Wish has been declining in recent years, and it is lucky that a big boss took over instead of going bankrupt.

Wish and hope both mean "hope". When the platform was first launched, it must have been placed with the founder's infinite hope to expand the global online market. However, now it seems that this hope has been extinguished in the face of declining performance.

Declining performance

Wish was founded in 2011 and has a history of more than ten years. Although it is still far from the cross-border e-commerce unicorn Amazon, it has achieved rapid development since its launch by relying on its model advantage of focusing on the sinking market:

As of early May 2017, Wish mobile app ranked first among shopping apps in 27 countries around the world, ranked 7th among all categories of apps in the Android App Store, and ranked 14th among all categories of apps in the US App Store.

In 2018, Wish supplied more than 200 million products to more than 350 million consumers worldwide, with more than 90 million monthly active users, 125,000 active merchants, and a peak daily shipment volume of 2 million orders.

On October 21, 2019, Hurun Research Institute released the "2019 Hurun Global Unicorn List", and Wish ranked 25th.

At the end of 2020, Wish was listed on the Nasdaq in the United States with a market value of approximately US$14 billion, enjoying great success.

However, like many cross-border e-commerce giants, the listing became a turning point for Wish. Since then, its stock price has been falling. As of press time, Wish's total market value is only US$150 million, a plunge of more than 93%. The stock price has also fallen from US$24 to US$6.2.

Performance declined simultaneously. In 2020, Wish's annual revenue reached US$2.541 billion, a year-on-year increase of 34% from US$1.901 billion in 2019. In 2021, performance began to change, with annual revenue of US$2.085 billion, a decrease of 18% from the previous year. 2022 was even more exaggerated, with annual revenue plummeting to US$571 million, a year-on-year decrease of 73%. The latest data shows that Wish's cumulative revenue in the first three quarters of 2023 was US$234 million.

In fact, before "selling itself", Wish did try to save itself.

Since the end of 2021, Wish has started a series of self-help measures:

1. Improve the quality of sellers. Two measures were introduced: First, the "Wish Standards" program was launched to encourage high-quality merchants who provide high-quality products and user experience. Second, self-registration was suspended and an "invite-only" system was implemented.

2. Shrink the market and carry out key market layout. Previously, Wish had extended its tentacles to more than 100 markets around the world. However, in January 2022, it withdrew from 79 countries (or regions) and focused on the development of 61 core and key emerging markets such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.

3. Reduce costs by canceling leases and streamlining staff. In February 2022, Wish launched a restructuring plan, which included reducing the company's headcount by about 15% (about 190 positions), exiting various facility leases, and reducing and adjusting supplier spending. In addition, when its second quarter financial report was released in 2023, it announced the layoff of 34% of its employees worldwide, a total of 255 people.

4. Change of leadership. In November 2022, Wish's second CEO Vijay Talwar took office. In early 2023, Vijay Talwar left the company and Joe Yan, who had worked for many internationally renowned technology giants and had a rich resume, became Wish's third CEO.

What is eBay's intention in acquiring Wish?

Wish has the title of "Pinduoduo of North America", and "cheap" has been its label for more than ten years. This easily reminds people of the current hot-shot TEMU. When TEMU was first launched, some people did equate it with Wish.

Since its launch in September 2022, TEMU has expanded to more than 48 markets around the world and has set a GMV (gross merchandise volume) target of $30 billion for 2024, more than double that of 2023. This speed of development is unimaginable for a cross-border e-commerce platform that was launched less than a year and a half ago, and it has shocked countless people.

Is eBay jealous too?

As we all know, eBay, the originator of e-commerce, was established almost as old as the giant Amazon. In the first ten years, its development was in full swing, and its business spread all over the world. At that time, Amazon was still its younger brother. However, in the past decade, eBay has been overwhelmed by Amazon, its market share has been continuously eroded, and its performance, market value and stock price have all declined.

The financial report shows that eBay's full-year revenue in 2022 is only US$9.775 billion, which is far from Amazon's more than US$500 billion in 2019. eBay's market value was about US$73.72 billion at its peak, but it has now shrunk to US$22.571 billion, and its stock price has also fallen from US$58 at its peak to US$43.5.

eBay's acquisition of Wish is more of a transformation and self-rescue than envy.

eBay’s current pressure comes mainly from three aspects: first, its old rival Amazon; second, more segmented and differentiated platforms such as Shopify, Walmart, SHEIN, TEMU, and Aliexpress.

Especially with the crazy popularity of the full-hosting model represented by Temu, eBay's situation has become even more difficult.

Under such circumstances, the acquisition of Wish proves that eBay's decision-making ability is still world-class. However, the decision-making team, operation team, marketing supply chain, and product supply chain of the fully-managed camp headed by Pinduoduo TEMU are all located in China. They have top Internet involution genes, and it is not enough to rely solely on sophisticated decision-making capabilities. It cannot prevent the fully-managed camp from frantically eroding its market share. The market generally believes that the prediction that TEMU will be the first to crush eBay is probably only delayed for a few years.

However, some industry insiders believe that there is no need to think too much about this acquisition. eBay has always held equity in many companies and there is no so-called transformation. Moreover, from a business perspective, eBay and Wish have some overlap.

This view coincides with the view of an eBay employee. According to him, it is still difficult to say what the purpose of eBay's acquisition of Wish is. It may be the same as its previous acquisitions of some e-commerce platforms in South Korea and India, where it is acquired and nurtured for a few years, and then revived and sold for money.

If that were the case, eBay would be in even worse trouble.

Wish

Qoo10

eBay