Wish: The E-commerce Giant That Declined, Rejected a 300 Billion Deal From Amazon, Eventually Lost 99% of Value / by Longtunman
Years ago, Wish was hailed as one of the most watchable American e-commerce platforms in the world.
It was so prominent that both Amazon and Alibaba reportedly approached Wish to acquire the business for approximately 320,000 million Baht several years back.
At its peak, the company reached a valuation of as high as 450,000 million Baht. Unbelievably, however, the final chapter ended like a tragedy.
In 2024, Wish was acquired by an Asian e-commerce company named Qoo10 for only 5,600 million Baht—a staggering value decrease of over 99%.
What happened to this rising star of e-commerce? Longtunman will explain.
Wish is an American e-commerce platform founded in 2010 by Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang.
Szulczewski, who served as the company's CEO, was formerly a Google engineer responsible for ad-ranking algorithms.
He eventually came up with the idea of creating a service that could display products to consumers directly without them needing to type a search query. He leveraged his marketing technology expertise to found the Wish business.
Initially, Wish started as a product recommendation platform where users could endlessly scroll through items. Later, it evolved into a full-scale e-commerce site.
Most products on Wish came from China and were extremely cheap, which immediately caught the eyes of shoppers.
Coupled with a strategy focused on aggressive social media promotion—spending over 32,000 million Baht annually on Facebook and Google ads—Wish became one of the top spenders in the market.
This led to rapid growth:
- It was the world's most-downloaded shopping app in 2018.
- It reached approximately 107 million monthly active users in 2020.
This growth was reflected in the company's revenue:
2016: 22,000 million Baht
2018: 39,000 million Baht
2020: 81,000 million Baht
With such a bright business trend, Wish decided to list on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2020 with a valuation of around 450,000 million Baht.
Investors at that time likely thought the company had immense potential—even to the point of becoming a future competitor to Amazon.
But then, hidden problems began to surface...
Historically, Wish focused primarily on marketing to increase user numbers without significantly improving the quality of service on its platform.
This led to numerous failures: fake storefronts, substandard products that differed from advertisements, and items that were ordered but never delivered.
As a result, customers had poor experiences and lost trust in the platform, leading them to never return for a second purchase.
The massive advertising budget spent to acquire customers who didn't return meant the company was essentially wasting money.
Furthermore, formidable competitors from China entered the market, such as SHEIN and Temu. These competitors utilized similar business models but offered much higher platform quality.
All of this caused Wish to decline rapidly:
2021 Revenue: 64,000 million Baht
2022 Revenue: 18,000 million Baht
2023 Revenue: 9,000 million Baht
Monthly active users dwindled to just 12 million, and the company suffered losses exceeding 10,000 million Baht for several consecutive years.
Founder and CEO Peter Szulczewski resigned in 2022. Despite several changes in leadership, the company was unable to turn the tide.
Ultimately, in 2024, Wish was acquired by Qoo10 for only 5,600 million Baht. This represents a value loss of 99% from its peak.
Many may not know that, in reality, both Amazon and Alibaba had contacted Wish to buy the business for about 320,000 million Baht years ago.
Amazon wanted Wish's low-income customer base and behavioral data from users who scrolled through the app hundreds of times a day.
Alibaba was interested in using Wish as a bridge between Chinese products and American consumers.
However, Szulczewski rejected all offers, believing that Wish could become a global giant on its own.
At that time, he likely didn't realize that it might have been the best opportunity Wish ever had—one it should not have let pass.
From a company once valued at hundreds of billions of Baht—resembling a "Temu-meets-TikTok" hybrid that was ahead of its time—it became a rising star that faded quickly.
This was because the company focused on quantitative growth over service quality.
In the end, customers might not remember who sold the cheapest items or who had the best ads. Instead, they remember "how they felt after the purchase."