GoWish’s shopping and wish list app is having its biggest year yet

Recession fears aren’t hurting the want listing and buying app GoWish, which is seeing report numbers forward of the 2025 vacation season. The app, which has north of 13.6 million registered customers, had its finest day but this week, when on Monday it hit No. 2 on the U.S. App Retailer.

Whereas GoWish has seen related adoption tendencies in earlier years, this 12 months has confirmed to be a breakout success. The app doubled the variety of customers from final 12 months, and it has been breaking data with a whole bunch of hundreds of recent every day customers within the month of November.

Within the U.S. alone, the app has practically 6.2 million customers, whereas it has round 1 million within the U.Okay. In its dwelling market of Denmark, the want listing app has over 50% market penetration and over 3.5 million registered Danish customers.

Although as we speak it operates as a tech firm, GoWish has a novel origin story.

The app was initially launched in 2015 by the Danish-Swedish nationwide postal service PostNord as “Ønskeskyen.” (That’s Danish for “want cloud.”) It was only a seasonal want listing gimmick, however its founders noticed the potential for it to be one thing extra.

In 2020, GoWish was acquired by Danish VC Dotcom Capital, which is owned by founder Casper Ravn‑Sørensen, who can also be GoWish’s chief progress officer, and his companion, CEO Mads Dahlerup. They spun it out as an unbiased tech firm and created a world model of Ønskeskyen (the app’s identify in Denmark and Norway).

“We is perhaps the primary state-founded tech platform to go world as a privately-owned scale-up,” Ravn‑Sørensen advised TechCrunch.

Shoppers can use the app to create a number of want lists for themselves, their household, and mates, and for various events. Needs — or merchandise you should purchase from on-line retailers — will be added on to your listing by copying and pasting a URL, trying to find a product, or looking the inspiration feeds that function thousands and thousands of merchandise. Whenever you’re prepared to purchase, you’ll be able to faucet a button within the app to go on to the retailer’s web site.

The corporate has round 65,000 affiliate partnerships and over 700 model partnerships, a lot of which are actually including “GoWish” buttons to their very own web sites. This mannequin has been profitable, defined Ravn‑Sørensen, because the app noticed internet earnings after tax of $1.7 million in its fiscal 12 months 2024, that are being reinvested in its progress. (GoWish declined to reveal its complete income.)

The corporate attributes its elevated adoption this 12 months to the advertising and marketing it’s been doing throughout Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snap. Snap even gave GoWish a shoutout on its This autumn earnings name, because it’s been one among Snap’s companion success stories.

“We’re excellent at optimising our advertising and marketing spends throughout digital platforms and that makes our world roll-out very efficient,” Ravn‑Sørensen mentioned.

The corporate will later increase its expertise with AI, however isn’t but sharing particulars about these plans.

“Now we have a mission of ‘fixing gifting’,” famous Ravn‑Sørensen, including that GoWish needs to make “customers’ desires and desires come true whereas making double-gifting and returns a factor of the previous.” (The app lets household and mates reserve gadgets on customers’ want lists so customers received’t obtain the identical present from a number of folks.)

“But, on an extended trajectory, we need to grow to be the ‘world genie’ of social buying, that may predict future client tendencies throughout generations,” he mentioned.

The Copenhagen-based firm is at the moment a group of 90 and is backed by Capital D, a London-based personal fairness agency that purchased one-third of the corporate in early 2025; the remainder is owned by the Danish VC Dotcom Capital.

GoWish is on the market on iOS and Android and provides a Chrome extension so as to add gadgets to want lists out of your pc.