Warm reminder, there is a video version at the end of the article. You are welcome to watch it on demand.
This Black five, despite the cold weather, does not in any way affect retailers' efforts to attract consumers: Amazon.Com Inc even provides free distribution services without setting a minimum shopping limit; Walmart Inc's offline stores are open 24 hours a day; Target Corp has hired 120000 new employees for this Black five. Retailers are fighting both offline and online.
Retailers attach so much importance to the holiday shopping season, such as Black five, because sales during this period are crucial to retailers: make a fortune or go bankrupt, accounting for 40% of annual sales during this period. Retailers are full of firepower in order to get out of the siege and get a piece of sales. When a large number of retail e-commerce are imitating Amazon.Com Inc to provide free distribution services, there is an e-commerce platform in reverse: no matter how much you buy, I will not give you free delivery.
Far from going bankrupt, such a platform has found a way out among a large number of e-commerce platforms, which is loved by consumers in Europe and the United States, and is favored by the capital market: the market valuation in 2017 is as high as $8.5 billion. It was even higher than the market capitalization of Macy's, Penny's and Sears at that time. This company is Wish--. From the point of view of commodity prices, this company, like Pinduoduo, made its debut by being cheap.
There are "good goods" under the bargain, and European and American buyers are stunned!
Open the Wish shopping platform, you will find that the price is its magic weapon, the real "American version of Pinduoduo": $1 for shoes, $9 for coats, $41 for drones, $93 for Samsung laptops. The overall price of the platform is more than one level lower than Amazon.Com Inc, but the sales volume is not low. General goods basically have sales of 1000 +, and some even sell millions of goods.
(source: Wish official website)
What is the quality of such a cheap commodity? When I opened a watch with a sales volume of 100,000 and the price of only $3, I found that the comments were not bad.
"the watch is great. I bought two different colors. One looks a bit like a plastic toy, but no one should look so closely, and the other looks a little better. On the whole, the money is worth it. "
"very good! It looks exactly like the picture. "
"it took about a week to receive the goods. The watch is light but good."
(source: Wish official website)
Are the comments brushed out? Judging from the evaluation videos of Wish by major bloggers on the YouTube platform, this e-commerce platform is very popular, with high video volume and playback. And the most common comment of these bloggers on Wish is "Nice!" "good", "majorly majorly cheap! "it's very cheap! ). It is true that Wish made its debut by being cheap, but this does not affect the affection of the European and American people for it. If you don't like the product you bought or if it's not suitable, the platform will give you free! Refund! There is no need to return. How can one not love this?
(videos of bloggers' evaluation of Wish on YouTube)
So what is the origin of Wish, which is so popular?
Why is it cheap? 94% of the sellers come from China.
Wish, which was founded in 2011 by Alphabet Inc-CL C and Yahoo engineers Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang, was originally a platform for making their own "wish list". In 2013, the company was transformed into an e-commerce business. Since then, the company's annual revenue has risen year after year, surpassing $1 billion for the first time in 2017, and its CEO revealed in an interview with US media site CNET that revenue could double this year.
The profit model of the platform is also very simple: like BABA, it makes money by charging the seller's commission, and the platform takes 15% of the seller's commission on each sale. In addition, the platform also charges sellers for advertising to get more "exposure" opportunities.
Why can Wish be successful with such a simple profit model? Buyers need Chinese products而The simple operation of the platform has attracted a large number of Chinese sellers to make money.
According to Marketplace Pulse, 94% of Wish sellers are from China. In China, sellers in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces account for more than half, of which Guangdong sellers account for 27%.
(sellers on the Wish platform, 94% from China, 4% from the United States, and the rest from the United Kingdom, Canada and India, source: Marketplace Pulse)
So many Chinese new sellers choose Wish, in addition to making money, there are other reasons: its background operation is very simple, a little understanding can upload products; no margin, zero threshold to sell things; the mode of operation is similar to Taobao, and so on. Of course, the vast American market is the ultimate goal of Chinese sellers.
Richard Last, senior director of the Global Digital Retail Research Center (Global Digital Retailing Research Center) at the University of North Texas, said, "there are a lot of people who want to buy goods directly from China. So this platform has basically become a "paradise" for American people to buy cheap and cost-effective Chinese goods.
Like eBay, Wish is a pure third-party online bazaar, and Chinese sellers need to solve their own delivery problems. Transporting goods from China to the United States is not as expensive as imagined. in many cases, the freight cost of selling E-mail insured goods of the United States Postal Service is sometimes lower than that of express delivery in the United States.
Chinese sellers can make money, American buyers can buy cost-effective goods, the key point is very cheap! Who doesn't like this win-win situation? Earlier, CEO Junny Yu, an e-commerce company in Yiwu, said she could sell $1 million a month in jewelry, clothing and pet products from Wish. Of these, 65% are sold to the United States, 15% to the UK and 10% to Australia.
At the same time, Wish's unique algorithm is also the reason to attract buyers and sellers. For buyers, Wish recommends not only the products they buy, but also the products they look at but refuse to buy. For sellers, Wish's traffic push is very accurate. Sellers use the function of the platform to pay attention to those who give praise to buyers, accurate drainage and attract the attention of buyers.
As Wish also spends a lot of money on advertising on Facebook Inc, the cost of advertising on Facebook Inc reached $100m in 2015, making it the second largest APP advertiser on Facebook Inc in 2017. Sellers can also associate their Wish platform with Facebook Inc, and then push product information to Facebook Inc to get more attention.
Where is the strength of Wish to challenge Amazon.Com Inc?
For retail giants like Amazon.Com Inc and Walmart Inc, Wish's annual revenue of $1 billion may not be worth mentioning at all, but Amazon.Com Inc felt the pressure and even offered to buy Wish for $10 billion, which was rejected by the founder. Its website even said, "now we are the sixth largest e-commerce company in the world, but our goal is to be number one in the world." "
The number of users has reached Amazon.Com Inc's level in 13 years. How can Amazon.Com Inc not be in a hurry?
In terms of the number of users, according to the platform, the number of buyers on Wish has reached 500 million in just six years. In April, its CEO revealed that the platform had 75 million monthly active users (MAU). According to statistics, Amazon.Com Inc's monthly active users (MAU) only reached 76 million in 2007, 13 years after its founding.
In terms of downloads, Wish is indeed very popular, according to SimilarWeb statistics, shopping APP, whether it is iPhone or Android mobile phones, Wish downloads always rank in the top 5.
（Source:SimilarWeb）
In addition, more than 1 million of the sellers on the platform offer more than 200 million items, and its CEO says it expects to ship more than 1 billion units this year. According to MarketplacePulse, as of October this year, the number of goods in Walmart Inc's online mall was only 43 million.
However, this does not mean that Wish does not have challenges.
Like Pinduoduo, such a simple business model is highly replicable. In addition to facing strong competitors such as Amazon.Com Inc and Walmart Inc, Wish also has to face competition from small e-commerce platforms such as Keaton Row and Wanelo.
Sometimes good things can be bought at a low price, but "cheap without good goods" also makes sense. Although many people have praised Wish, others are condemning its poor quality and other problems. Previously, managers said that the price advantage of Wish is that it does not sell brand-name products, so the price is relatively low, but in fact, some knockoffs have appeared on Wish.
When all e-commerce businesses take "free delivery", Wish insists that there is no free delivery. And as buyers place orders in different stores, this means that the time to receive parcels is also different. Some parcels may be received in a week, but some parcels may have to wait a month. Many consumers say that few things are worth waiting for so long.
Summary
As some analysts say, the crux of the problem lies in poverty. Under the pressure of income, housing prices, medical care, and old-age care, the so-called "poor" class in China at this stage is very large, so Pinduoduo has room for development. What about the American version of "Pinduoduo" Wish? Is it curiosity or bargain that leads to Wish, or is it the downgrade of American consumption?
(editor / Jiang Wenwen)