Wanelo is an

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

company headquartered in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

’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 Deena Varshavskaya is the founder and CEO of Wanelo (“wah-nee-loh,” from Want, Need, Love) a digital mall where users can discover and buy products from anywhere online. She lives in San Francisco, California. Early life Varshavskaya was bor ...

History

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 is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Founded by Josh Kopelman Joshua Kopelman is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. Kopelman is best ...

. 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 affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of ...

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

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

. 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 hashtags, 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 image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...

. 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 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 phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

s for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and Android 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