Wanelo is an

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

company headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

’s

SoMa Soma may refer to: Businesses and brands * SOMA (architects), a New York–based firm of architects * Soma (company), a company that designs eco-friendly water filtration systems * SOMA Fabrications, a builder of bicycle frames and other bicycle ...

district. It was founded in 2012 by Deena Varshavskaya.

History

Deena Varshavskaya founded the company because she felt frustrated by shopping in physical malls and wanted a social media platform that would allow her to see what her friends were buying. In 2010, she hired a web developer to help her create the website, which underwent numerous changes into 2011. The website's name "Wanelo" is a combination of the words "want", "need" and "love". The company raised $2 million in seed-funding round in March 2012 from investors including Floodgate Capital and

First Round Capital First Round Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman and Howard Morgan First Round typically provides seed-stage funding and focuses on po ...

. In March 2013, Wanelo raised $10 million in funding reportedly raising their valuation to US$100 million. Wanelo 3.0 was launched in 2013. The company was one of several websites whose user data was hacked and sold by

GnosticPlayers GnosticPlayers is a computer hacking group, which is believed to have been formed in 2019 and gained notability for hacking Zynga, Canva, and several other online services. ''The Independent'' reported that GnosticPlayers had claimed responsibilit ...

in 2019.

Overview

Wanelo is a social platform where users can share and search for items, which they purchase through the retailer's website. The site does not feature any advertisements and is primarily monetized through

affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which Affiliate (commerce), affiliates receive a wiktionary:commission, commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to Outsourcing, ...

. Users can create an account on the site by signing up via email or connecting via

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. The site only allows items which are currently available for purchase to be posted. Wanelo users can post products or follow stores and people. Users can also “Save” items others have posted on Wanelo into their own wish lists. Users can also search for products via

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...

s, like many other social networks. The site's layout, which allows users to save and share images of items, has been compared to

Pinterest Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of digital Bulletin board, pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pint ...

. Retailers whose products are posted on the website are able to create store pages, which they can organize and manage. Some retailers, including

Abercrombie & Fitch Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (A&F) is an American lifestyle store, lifestyle retailer, founded in 1892 which focuses on contemporary clothing targeting customers in their early 20's to mid 40's. Headquartered in New Albany, Ohio, the company operate ...

added cross-functionality with Wanelo to their own online storefronts.

Usage

As of August 2014, Wanelo had 11 million registered users, up from one million in November 2012. As of 2014, 90% of Wanelo's members were women and 60% were under the age of 24. Along with its website, Wanelo has

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

s for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

operating systems. 85% of Wanelo's traffic is from mobile devices.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Official Website
Online retailers of the United States Internet properties established in 2012 Social networks