Goods direct from China: wish.com

by philg

A newspaper article about wish.com inspired me to try out this shop-direct-from-China service. As noted in my recent posting about Apple, computer nerds are predisposed to think that a distributed computer network will result in disintermediation, e.g., with consumers buying from manufacturers rather than retailers.

Here’s what I learned…

  • the process does work in that ordered items arrived in the mail 7-10 days later
  • the Chinese word for “polyester” is “silk” (three “silk neckties” ordered from the site arrived with fabric tags saying that they were made from polyester)
  • stuff direct from China isn’t all that much cheaper than stuff on sale at a department store or at Amazon

Comparing what I got from wish.com to what I get from amazon.com, I am reminded of Richard Pryor’s comment in Live on the Sunset Strip:

I went to Arizona State Penitentiary to do a film with Gene Wilder [Stir Crazy] … and it was really strange because it is 80 percent black people in there … [and] there are no black people in Arizona. … [I thought that imprisoned black men were being persecuted by Whitey; they were] nice people just got a bad break. … I was there six weeks and I talked to some of brothers there. Thank God we got penitentiaries. [video clip]

Bottom line on wish.com: Thank God we got retailers!

 

 

6 thoughts on “Goods direct from China: wish.com”

  2. I don’t know about wish.com but for years I have gotten little things like computer cables and adapters from China via ebay. Sometimes they cost as little as $1 with free delivery (and always less than the comparable item bought from a US source). I don’t understand the business model – it would seem that the postage alone would be close to $1. The only downside is that it sometimes takes a couple of weeks for the item to arrive. I’ve gotten slightly more expensive things too and they have worked out fine – bike speedometers, LED bulbs and flashlights, etc. Not the highest quality but the prices were unbeatable.

  3. Francois – I think they have lumped together lots of different things under “manufacturing”. If you are talking about something very energy intensive like aluminum smelting, the US is competitive. If you are talking about something that is labor intensive (making men’s suits or electronics, then it’s not even close). Even now Chinese wages are maybe 1/10th of US wages.

  4. I order my husband’s Viagra direct from India. It’s as low as $1 per pill and works as well as the $20 stuff purchased with a prescription at my local CVS. I buy the loadable Visa card at CVS, order on-line, and the small, brown, discreet package arrives in two weeks.

  5. @Smartest Woman: How do you trust the ingredient of the Viagra from India is legit? Why don’t all Americans smarten up and do the same for ALL other medical needs?

  6. George: That’s an easy answer: moral hazard. Most Americans have prescription drug insurance so they don’t care what drugs cost. If they didn’t have insurance they would probably go to France, Israel, Mexico, India, etc. for all of their medical needs. (Nobody has “new TV insurance” and therefore nobody pays 5X the Korean cost for a made-in-America new TV.)

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