The "Blind Box" is a game invented by contemporary businessmen, and many people don't know what's inside until it's opened. Some people have suggested that seeing Pinduoduo's entrepreneurial journey to conquer the global market is as if watching it open a "Pandora blind box", adding many new variables to the e-commerce industry. What I'm afraid of is that some things have already run out, and some unknown ones are still in the box.
ran out, for example, the matter of "low volume". Driven by the "Pinduoduo low price", other peers in the market are panicking because it is not easy to engage in e-commerce, the price is too "cheap", and even the need to ship at a loss. It may be that only Pinduoduo can buck the trend in such a business atmosphere.
Its popular cross-border e-commerce Temu also copied and borrowed from Pinduoduo's method, and created a unique growth miracle in the history of e-commerce in just one year after it was launched, gaining 200 million ** in Europe and the United States, and dominating many shopping app lists. What's even more surprising is that the data shows that the average usage time of temu users has surpassed that of the American e-commerce giant Amazon, and its "low-price small fist" has also had a great impact on Amazon, and even the impact is so big that Amazon has been forced to adjust the platform rules many times.
How cheap is temu?Many ** found that since the temu shined, even the "dollar store" in the United States was swept up to the altar, the profits shrank, and it was difficult to sell.
When describing its success story, Temu also believes that it is the low-price strategy that allows it to break through the encirclement overseas. The domestic e-commerce market is becoming increasingly saturated, and Pinduoduo has quickly successfully copied another "Pinduoduo" overseas, relying on cheap Chinese products to firmly seize the minds of overseas users, and implement "cheap is king" to the world.
The layman looks at the bustle, and the insider looks at the doorway. Fundamentally, Temu's performance in going to sea has progressed by leaps and bounds, first of all, due to its "son is precious by mother", with the blessing of the powerful Chinese mother Pinduoduo, so that it can boldly touch the predecessors in the industry to cross the river.
Back in 2009, Leqi e-commerce, which has been famous in the circle for a long time, but is rarely known outside the circle, was born. Among the founding members of Leqi E-commerce, there are important "trios": Huang Zheng, Chen Lei and Gu Huanhuan, who later became the founder of Pinduoduo, the chairman of Pinduoduo and the COO of Pinduoduo respectively. Although Huang Zheng and others cut off Leqi in terms of equity identity very early, some Hangzhou ** learned through senior e-commerce people who are familiar with Pinduoduo that "Leqi's current core management should be very familiar with Huang Zheng and them." It is said that they have just rented a new office building in Shanghai, which is also next to Pinduoduo. ”
Leqi's "Huang Zheng era" is said to be quite exciting, and Huang Zheng's choice to establish Leqi's time is also considered to be an appropriate benefit - in 2009, ***, which has not changed its name to Tmall, launched "Double 11", many sellers have made a lot of money, and Huang Zheng and others have also begun to operate on behalf of *** sellers, "copying", "pasting" and "moving" various store copywriting.
Soon after the establishment of Leqi, Huang Zheng began to incubate more cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurial projects, and successively launched the cross-border wedding dress e-commerce brand JJ'S House (which was later incorporated into "Lebei"), Mocan, and the domestic e-commerce project "Pinduoduo".
In 2016, "Leqi" became "Mocan". LatePost once interviewed a Mocan employee, who thought that in the early years, they were not much different from SHEIN, and they all took goods in the clothing market and then put them on their own ** sales. The gap between the two sides began in 2015, and Xu Yangtian, the founder of SHEIN, invested all his profits into the ** chain to build his own brand, and at the same time absorbed external investment to set up a design and ** chain team of hundreds of people, forcing manufacturers to upgrade and produce clothing in accordance with the mode of small single fast running.
Mo Can couldn't keep up with his opponent's rhythm in time. Mo Can "suddenly" fell to the ground halfway to sea.
Back in 2018, Mocan incubated a full-category cross-border e-commerce platform VOVA. Vova is known as the "European Pinduoduo", the source of goods comes from China, and it sells low-priced white labels through buying volume. Vova only lived for three years, and according to the ** "Deep Burn" report, the company was subjected to a large number of complaints because of the problem of copycats and fakes, and was finally shut down by Shanghai in October 2021. A "Vova Rights Protection Amount Statistical Table" has been circulated in many seller groups, showing that there are 562 sellers involved, and some sellers have revealed that there is a large seller involved in the amount of 9.56 million yuan.
The bad news is not unusual. Next, Lebe disbanded. One day in November 2021, Mocan was also found to have gone to the empty building, leaving a large number of **businessmen who wanted to cry without tears to assemble at Mocan Company.
The layman looks at the bustle, and the insider looks at the doorway. Fundamentally, Temu's performance in going to sea has progressed by leaps and bounds, first of all, due to its "son is precious by mother", with the blessing of the powerful Chinese mother Pinduoduo, so that it can boldly touch the predecessors in the industry to cross the river.
Back in 2009, Leqi e-commerce, which has been famous in the circle for a long time, but is rarely known outside the circle, was born. Among the founding members of Leqi E-commerce, there are important "trios": Huang Zheng, Chen Lei and Gu Huanhuan, who later became the founder of Pinduoduo, the chairman of Pinduoduo and the COO of Pinduoduo respectively. Although Huang Zheng and others cut off Leqi in terms of equity identity very early, some Hangzhou ** learned through senior e-commerce people who are familiar with Pinduoduo that "Leqi's current core management should be very familiar with Huang Zheng and them." It is said that they have just rented a new office building in Shanghai, which is also next to Pinduoduo. ”
Leqi's "Huang Zheng era" is said to be quite exciting, and Huang Zheng's choice to establish Leqi's time is also considered to be an appropriate benefit - in 2009, ***, which has not changed its name to Tmall, launched "Double 11", many sellers have made a lot of money, and Huang Zheng and others have also begun to operate on behalf of *** sellers, "copying", "pasting" and "moving" various store copywriting.
Soon after the establishment of Leqi, Huang Zheng began to incubate more cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurial projects, and successively launched the cross-border wedding dress e-commerce brand JJ'S House (which was later incorporated into "Lebei"), Mocan, and the domestic e-commerce project "Pinduoduo".
In 2016, "Leqi" became "Mocan". LatePost once interviewed a Mocan employee, who thought that in the early years, they were not much different from SHEIN, and they all took goods in the clothing market and then put them on their own ** sales. The gap between the two sides began in 2015, and Xu Yangtian, the founder of SHEIN, invested all his profits into the ** chain to build his own brand, and at the same time absorbed external investment to set up a design and ** chain team of hundreds of people, forcing manufacturers to upgrade and produce clothing in accordance with the mode of small single fast running.
Mo Can couldn't keep up with his opponent's rhythm in time. Mo Can "suddenly" fell to the ground halfway to sea.
Back in 2018, Mocan incubated a full-category cross-border e-commerce platform VOVA. Vova is known as the "European Pinduoduo", the source of goods comes from China, and it sells low-priced white labels through buying volume. Vova only lived for three years, and according to the ** "Deep Burn" report, the company was subjected to a large number of complaints because of the problem of copycats and fakes, and was finally shut down by Shanghai in October 2021. A "Vova Rights Protection Amount Statistical Table" has been circulated in many seller groups, showing that there are 562 sellers involved, and some sellers have revealed that there is a large seller involved in the amount of 9.56 million yuan.
The bad news is not unusual. Next, Lebe disbanded. One day in November 2021, Mocan was also found to have gone to the empty building, leaving a large number of **businessmen who wanted to cry without tears to assemble at Mocan Company.
Launched in September 2022, it has reached a level that other peers need more than ten years to reach in just over a year after its launch, and Temu's growth rate can be called Nezha in the cross-border circle. "Nezha" Temu does not hide the ambition of the latecomer at all, that is, it wants to compete with Amazon, and even wants to surpass this "king of global e-commerce".
*I found that the products sold by temu overseas** are very cheap, and one dollar can be broken into several petals.
Back in early September 2022, when Temu was still in the testing stage, some industry insiders revealed that Pinduoduo and Shuangda were brewing new cross-border e-commerce projects, and the new projects may follow the business strategies of their predecessors.
Until TEMU officially landed in the United States, everyone found that on this new platform, the phenomenon of "borrowing" products has occurred. Strictly speaking, temu is just a channel, it does not rely on the loyalty of the platform to attract consumers, but relies on "large volume, low price, continuous reference to popular models" to attract orders, and use "chop", mini games and so on to attract users to stay. Therefore, it can make a large number of orders, but it cannot develop a brand, let alone win a premium space for sellers.
Temu, which was born out of Pinduoduo, has been the most controversial approach of conniving at and even encouraging platform sellers to "learn from it". Amazon was one of the biggest victims of the period. According to a number of ** reports at home and abroad, almost every day, sellers from Amazon say that they see exactly the same ** on temu**, and there is no effect after reporting to temu.
After visiting dozens of cases, the world-famous Wired magazine "Wired" believes that "Temu sellers are cloning Amazon storefronts". In these cases, Amazon sellers from China claimed to have found their latest product listings on temu, including products**, descriptions, and a "browse tree" (a way to optimize product listings), and they have complained to temu and asked to remove these**, but without success.
Another seller revealed that due to the frequent and serious situation of "borrowing" other brand products, since the launch of Temu, the suspected infringing products on the platform have actually been issued more than 20 temporary restraining orders (TRO) by US courts, requiring Temu and Temu sellers to stop infringing on other platform sellers, brands, and artists. Among those involved in the prosecution of Temu are internationally renowned brands such as Nike. Temu was sentenced to the largest penalty by TRO, involving more than 100 infringing sellers on the platform at one time.
According to a Guangdong-based intellectual property agency, there are commonalities in many cases where Temu has been sued for infringement, including PDD Holdings Incand Whaleco, IncThe identities of the two defendants are public, and almost every case is a mass prosecution.
Of course, every time the infringing platform will push the responsibility to the merchant, but Temu is probably happy to see it. Some sellers woke up after the accident, and what the platform wants is traffic and orders: when something happens, it spreads its hands and shows the statement on the **, indicating that it has a "strict policy against listing or selling products that infringe on third-party trademarks, copyrights or patents".
If Temu had strictly managed the platform, the "borrowing" scandal would probably not have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, with an average of one infringement being flown to Temu every 20 days. Even foreign platforms such as Amazon have been committed to helping Chinese sellers build brands and innovate, but many of these Chinese brands and buyers have found that their products have been copied to the Temu platform and sold at low prices. To cause such a situation, although the compensation or account freezing is basically borne by the Temu seller, the platform is to blame. There has even been speculation that this could be part of Temu's growth strategyWith very little risk and cost, get a lot of traffic and benefits.
In December 2023, the overseas ** "Modern Retail" published an article arguing that TEMU used legal means to promote the news cycle, and its lawsuit is likely to be a self-marketing behavior.
When brands and sellers complain more and more about temu's infringement, temu's own "borrowing" gene can no longer be hidden.
It is worth noting that even if Temu sellers operate honestly, under Temu's full custody rules, sellers still have no pricing power, and the front-end selling price is not linked to the seller's profit, and the profit obtained by the seller = Temu back-end supply price - cost price. It was found that after the price of temu rose at the front desk, the profit not only could not enter the seller's wallet, but the order volume may also decrease, because the cheaper seller is still going in.
I used to think that the sales would increase, but I didn't expect the front desk to increase the price for me, and it fell from nearly 200 to 90 in a single day, doubling down!"Some sellers expressed great incomprehension.
* "Dashu Cross-border" believes that Temu has carved a hole in the overseas market full of giants and allowed itself to quickly gain a foothold. However, the seller cannot enjoy the dividends of the front desk, and there is no "more sales", only "small profits". In addition, Temu sellers do not have the "right to leave" on their own. The platform does not provide the option to return the store, so you can only find a platform buyer to solve it. Unexpectedly, the buyers on the platform will especially "** a large number of sellers "have no way to leave the store".
The painful lesson of going to sea deeply pierced the seller's heart. Many temu sellers resonated, "It's like a group of desperate people shouting in the valley, and even if they shout loudly, they can only hear their own echoes." ”
The miracle of temu's expansion, in a short period of time, can take advantage of the operational strength accumulated by Pinduoduo's domestic cheap e-commerce business, and the extremely low price strategy also relies on the low price brought by the labor-intensive Chinese factory, which is equivalent to using the seller's profit margin to curry favor with overseas. However, if temu involves small and medium-sized businesses in a low-cost white label, without innovation, without reverence for the brand, and without business ethics baggage, then whether its success is a good thing is a big question mark. The above-mentioned comments from industry insiders are thought-provoking.
Behind the spring of shouting white cards, I am afraid that there is a harsh winter for the brand.
Disclaimer: This article is based on the company's statutory disclosures and public information, but the author does not guarantee the completeness and timeliness of the information.