Wish is an e-commerce platform that links consumers to a diverse assortment of affordable and frequently unbranded items, spanning categories like apparel, electronics, and household goods, providing discounted offers and savings. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like Wish, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is a marketplace SaaS. Go live, start selling, iterate.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
Leveraging open source can be advantageous, offering complete control and the freedom to customize. However, these advantages often entail significant expenses. The creation of a full-scale marketplace solution is a prolonged and costly process, typically lasting several months to years. This insight is drawn from various marketplace project experiences.
Unless you have access to substantial funding, it’s usually more prudent to go with a ready-made, all-encompassing marketplace solution like Vendo, as recommended by someone with a long history of billing clients for marketplace development.
Back to the Wish marketplace case study
Wish, an e-commerce platform known for its deeply discounted products, has had a transformative journey since its inception. Originally founded as a wishlist app, it evolved into a full-fledged e-commerce platform in 2013, quickly gaining popularity for its affordability and wide range of products, primarily from China. By 2019, it became the third-largest e-commerce marketplace in the U.S. in terms of sales. However, its trajectory has not been without challenges.
The platform has faced criticism for listing poor-quality or counterfeit goods, leading to customer dissatisfaction and issues with regulatory compliance. These challenges have impacted its financial health; as of August 2023, Wish’s stock value has plummeted more than 99% from its IPO price in December 2020, marking a significant loss in market value.
Despite these hurdles, Wish remains a significant player in the e-commerce space. As of 2022, the platform generated $570 million in revenue, albeit a 73% decline from the previous year, and reported a net loss of $384 million.
It boasts 27 million monthly active users and over 600,000 merchants globally. The platform is distinguished by its unique shopping experience, which includes a variety of shipping options, a money-back guarantee on deliveries, and a gamified “Blitz Buy” feature offering additional discounts. Additionally, Wish provides seller protections and a dispute resolution process to maintain platform integrity and customer satisfaction.
Wish’s advertising and promotional tools, such as ProductBoost, leverage machine learning to enhance product visibility and drive sales, offering a cost-effective way for merchants to reach potential customers. The platform also includes robust seller support, including a dashboard for tracking sales, customer feedback, and compliance with quality and service standards, all crucial for maintaining a good standing on the platform.
How to emulate Wish marketplace success?
If you’re aspiring for success like Wish, plan to open your marketplace swiftly, preferably in weeks instead of months. Examine the compatibility of your product offerings with your audience’s demands, and adapt your customer acquisition techniques based on tangible outcomes.
It’s wise to gauge the market’s potential before fully investing in its development.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you can give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
