Love it or hate it, you have to accept Temu It was a blasting year. Launched in late 2022, the Chinese-owned ecommerce site, known for selling a vast array of surprisingly affordable goods, took only two years to become a household name in the US. Over the past 12 months, it has topped the download charts, leaving behind other viral apps like ChatGPT threadsand now operates in dozens of countries around the world. Even its biggest rival Amazon has recently introduced a Temu clone It's called Amazon Haul, which is very similar to the original in terms of both its logistics supply chain and user interface.
Temu's total sales are projected to exceed $50 billion this year, potentially tripling the figure by 2023, according to analysts at AB Bernstein and Tech Buzz China. Temu's website is now available approximately 700 million visits every month around the world, and Apple recently revealed that it was most downloaded The app on iPhones in the US by 2024.
Teemu has now completely replaced Wish in the cultural lexicon as a signifier of knockoffs or budget-friendly alternatives to the erstwhile online shopping site. For example, the winner of a recent Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York City described himself as “teemu-the chalametMillions of ordinary people have tried the app, many of whom learned about it through one of Teemu's inescapable and persistent advertising campaigns. At this time, your grandma Perhaps she is also infatuated with Teemu.
“My friends and family members who didn't know what would happen in 2023 now know,” says Moira Weigel, an assistant professor at Harvard University who studies international online markets. “Some relatives who know 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 appropriate customer segments, and finding a cheaper way to ship products from one to the other. This allowed the shopping platform to defy early analysts' predictions that it would quickly deplete its cash reserves and go bust.
Teemu, which is owned by PDD, one of China's biggest ecommerce giants, is growing so fast that its Western counterparts can't really understand, says Juozas Kaziuknas, founder of ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse. Are. “When you look at a company like Teemu, it's moving a thousand miles an hour,” he says.