Temu’s Takeover Is Now Complete

Love it or hate it, you have to admit before Had a banger year. Launching in late 2022, the Chinese-owned ecommerce site, known for a vast array of surprisingly affordable products, took just two years to become a household name in the US. In the last 12 months, it has topped the download charts, surpassing other viral apps like ChatGPT threadAnd now works in dozens of countries around the world. Even its biggest rival Amazon recently launched one I’m afraid of clones Called Amazon Haul, it closely resembles the original in both its logistics supply chain and user interface.

Temu is projected to generate more than $50 billion in total sales this year, potentially tripling its 2023 figure, according to analysts at AB Bernstein and Tech Buzz China. Temur website now available About 700 million visits Every month worldwide, and Apple recently revealed it Most downloaded Apps of 2024 on the iPhone in the US.

Temu has now completely replaced Wish, an earlier bargain online shopping site, as a knockoff or budget-friendly alternative in the cultural lexicon. The winner of a recent Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York City, for example, called himself “Go ahead Chalamet” Millions of ordinary people have tried the app, many of whom learned about it through Temur’s seemingly inexorable and relentless advertising campaigns. At this point, your grandmother Probably obsessed with Temu too.

“Friends and family members of mine who don’t know what this is in 2023 study transnational online marketplaces,” says Moira Weigel, an assistant professor at Harvard University. Relatives who know that I study China or eCommerce will say, ‘Oh, you must know all about Temu,’ in a way that didn’t happen a year ago.”

Weigel says Temu did a few things right, including identifying the right suppliers in China, targeting the right customer segments and finding a cheaper way to ship products from one to the other. That allowed the shopping platform to defy early analyst predictions that it would quickly burn through its cash reserves and flame out.

Temu, which is owned by PDD, one of China’s biggest e-commerce giants, is moving and pivoting at a pace that its Western counterparts can’t really understand, said Juojas Kaziukenas, founder of ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse. “When you look at a company like Temu, it’s moving a thousand miles an hour,” he says.