temu ran wild in the United States and provoked Pinduoduo beams.
Author: IT Times reporter Mao Yu
Edited by Hao Junhui and Sun Yan
At the end of 2023, Temu, Pinduoduo's overseas e-commerce platform, won the top spot in the App Store's app volume list in the United States with its outstanding performance, surpassing many popular apps such as TikTok, Instagram, Google, and YouTube, becoming the most popular free app in the United States.
In the United States, Temu directly "took flying" Pinduoduo's financial report for the third quarter of 2023, and promoted Pinduoduo to take over the title of "first brother" in China from Alibaba.
Since its launch in September 2022, Temu has grown rapidly. According to Pinduoduo's official caliber, as of the end of the third quarter of 2023, Duoduo cross-border has penetrated into more than 100 manufacturing industrial belts in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong, Anhui and other places, and promoted manufacturing products to enter more than 40 countries and regions such as North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. At present, Duoduo cross-border exports more than 400,000 parcels per day, with an average daily cargo weight of about 600 tons, more than half of which are sent to the US market. In the U.S. market, Temu has launched more than 2 million SKUs.
At the overseas "Black Friday Net One" shopping festival that will end in 2023, the "Overseas Four Little Tigers", including TEMU, gave Amazon, the "king" of the American retail industry, a blow to the head. **Logistics timeliness and cost-effectiveness are the reasons why temu is popular overseas.
As far as I know, there are currently more than 100,000 stores on temu. Huang Long, CEO of Zhizhi Data, told the "IT Times" reporterIn the first half of 2023, their company stopped the Pinduoduo main website business and shifted all its focus to Temu, and the results were better than expected"First, temu's operating model is relatively comfortable;Second, TEMU is a brand-new platform with broad prospects. ”
Based on the advantages of the full custody model, the company has opened more than 10 stores on the Temu platform, and its main business ranges from daily necessities to pet supplies.
Temu saves us from doing our own publicity, customer service and most of the operational work, and the company spends time on product selection, docking with Pinduoduo buyers, and warehousing and packaging. Huang Long introduced, after TEMU bought the United States' "Super Bowl" advertising space, it became famous in the United States, and its revenue also jumped, although their orders and revenues have not caught up with the main station, but in the long run, "it will not take too long to exceed the main station".
At the beginning of Temu's operation, product selection is the key.
Judging from previous surveys, more than 50% of consumers in North America have a positive attitude towards domestic brands that are currently going overseas, and products such as electronic digital, smart home, gardening, and pet single products are favored by North American consumers, which is a positive cycle. Wu Yulin, director of business development at The Trade Desk in China, previously told the IT Times at the TTD 2023 North American holiday shopping season sharing conference.
The above remarks have also been confirmed in the best-selling products of Huanglong Company, because the manufacturer has been cooperating for many years, Huanglong Company selected the right product and signed a production contract with the manufacturer after research. "At first, we also stepped on thunder, and some domestic best-selling items were sold very poorly abroad, such as plastic wrap. However, there are some unexpected products, such as water pipes purchased more in China, which sell well as a single product abroad, and most people buy them for their own garden irrigation. ”
Huang Long mentioned that most of the foreign pet owners are pets, and pet products are also one of the popular models, such as collars and pet toys are within the scope of the company's head selection," he saidTemu's selection cannot refer to the domestic market, and we often study the living habits of foreign consumers, which is actually very different from that in China.
The freshness that temu gives sellers is by no means limited to that. After the selection is put on the shelves, we will wait for Pinduoduo buyers to come to select the goods, "they will negotiate with us to purchase ** after they are selected, and we will first give a reasonable ** that meets market expectations, and the buyers will directly agree in most cases." "Zhang Yu (pseudonym), a staff member engaged in Temu's operations, told the IT Times that there are not many cases of buyers lowering prices," he saidAt present, Temu's attitude towards merchants is much friendlier than before on the main station, and as long as we are reasonable, we are unlikely to be depressed.
After the buyer selects the goods, the merchant only needs to package and send it to the nearest TEMU warehouse normally, "There is no need to send it to the customs, as long as it is sent to Guangzhou, it saves a lot of things, and the overseas logistics are controlled by the platform itself." The staff member also mentionedThe buyer's first order of a single product is about 20 orders, "to test the product first, whether it is good to sell." ”
Compared with the ease of opening stores for merchants and small and medium-sized companies on the main site, individual sellers need to be in the right place at the right time if they want to take off on temu.
Temu, which is biased towards the self-operated model, does not have high requirements for merchants to settle in, "basically has a business license, and you can do business in temu if you will open a store and put goods on the shelves, without too many requirements for funds, and there is no need to pay a deposit, which is somewhat similar to the early **." The industry insider also mentioned that the operation of temu does not require merchants to be fluent in English listening, speaking, reading and writing, "The listing platform of domestic goods is all in Chinese, and it doesn't matter whether the merchant will speak English." ”
Many individual sellers have tasted the sweetness from it.
Xiao Ye, a seller with almost no experience in e-commerce, began to operate a temu store independently in August 2023, "I just wanted to do a side business to make some extra money, but I didn't expect that in less than 3 months, the single-day sales exceeded 1,500 orders." Xiao Ye said that he first registered the company and opened a store on temu, and the products were several smart daily necessities found on the 1688 platform and put them on the shelves of temu by themselves. “What I didn't expect was that there were only more than 10 orders a day at the earliest, and now there are thousands of orders, which can support my living expenses for a month.
Experiences like Xiaoye are constantly shared on major social networks in China, and Temu's potential has made many freelancers see a trend, but not everyone has the same joy.
Some netizens complained that temu** was pressed too low, "It's completely the lowest price in 1688." "If you include costs such as labor costs, there is almost no profit to speak of," he saidIt can only make small profits but quick turnover, and it is too difficult to make a fortune”。Some people also complain about the rules of the platform, thinking that they are changing too fast, and if they are accidentally fined, they may not make a profit.
Whether it is an individual seller or a brand seller, temu requires that quality problems be avoided as much as possible at the source. "First, I want to quickly gain a firm foothold in foreign markets and open up the market by quality and reputationSecond, it is also necessary to avoid the problem of excessive cost caused by returns. Huang Long mentioned.
Due to Temu's need to ensure the timeliness of delivery, most of the goods will be delivered to Temu's overseas warehouses as soon as they are cleared, and then distributed according to the order. "If there is a quality problem, it will be a hassle to return it. Huang Long mentioned that the company rarely receives Pinduoduo's ** on after-sales problems, and in most cases, the quality of the goods you send to the domestic warehouse must be guaranteed, so as to avoid the cost of return. ”
This is completely different from the impression given by the previous Pinduoduo domestic main station.
temu will strictly control the quality of goods before delivery, and the quality control of the domestic Pinduoduo main station mostly depends on merchants, so there will be a certain gap in the quality of goods. An industry insider close to Pinduoduo told the IT TimesDomestic Pinduoduo still adopts the platform model, compared with temu's full custody model, the control of commodity quality is naturally insufficient, but "good service" is a unified requirement for domestic and foreign platforms, therefore, the domestic main station has adopted a more radical "refund only" method, and it has also gone out of a way, which has recently been imitated by other platforms.
In addition, temu also provides 90-day free returns and 30-day price guarantee services abroad, and each order supports one free return. For reference, the Amazon return period is 30 days, and the **protection period is 7 days. Such a "good service" is very attractive to dispel consumers' shopping concerns.
In December 2023, the market analysis platform SimilarWeb released the latest traffic data of Temu in the European market, from April 23 to November 23, 2023, Temucom ranks among the top 10 retailers in Europe for traffic share in multiple categoriesIn the UK and France, Temu has squeezed into the top 5, especially in the UK, where Temu has more than 11 million monthly visitors. Temu ships an average of about 1 million packages per day in the U.S., a small but growing number of packages shipped per day in the U.S., according to express shipping company ShipMatrix.
In order to quickly knock on the door of the international market, temu continues the consistent advantage of its parent company Pinduoduo - low price.
*To be "eye-catching", reducing logistics costs is one of Temu's important means. Taking Duoduo's cross-border partner Matson as an example, it has created a maritime highway for the majority of Sino-US cross-border sellers by virtue of its dedicated terminal at the Port of Long Beach in the United States, as well as its unique two out-of-port yards and the fast pick-up mode without appointment. Through Matson shipping channels,It only takes 11 days to transport from Shanghai to Long Beach in the United States, which is half the time compared with traditional sea freight, and the cost is lower than that of air freight.
Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, believes that the opening of the shipping express channel is a major benefit to TEMU. The increase in sea freight not only greatly reduces the cost of cross-border logistics, but also expands the category of goods, and the large goods that were previously inconvenient to be transported by air can also go to sea smoothly, while reducing the risk of too single logistics channels. It is also a major event for China's cross-border e-commerce industry, which will lead more and more platforms to turn to sea freight.
Previously, it was reported by foreign ** that TEMU quickly occupied part of the discount retail market with low prices, posing a threat to physical discount stores such as "dollar stores". As of the end of November 2023, Temu accounted for nearly 17% of the U.S. discount retail market.
At present, I am a little worried about whether Temu will encounter some international pressure after it becomes bigger, such as TikTok, which was sanctioned by some countries before. Zhang Yu expressed his concerns to the IT Times reporter. Previously, TikTok was sanctioned to varying degrees by the United States, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and other countries due to excessive momentum.
Temu's rapid expansion has put pressure on the international retail giant Amazon.
In December 2023, Amazon announced that it would reduce the commission rate for clothing products priced below $15 to 5% from January 2024Reduced the commission rate for clothing products between $15 and $20 to 10%. Previously, the commission rate for both types of products was 17%. The move is seen as one of the measures to deal with the impact of China's cross-border e-commerce.
At the Amazon Global Selling Cross-border Summit held at the end of 2023, the official person in charge of Amazon replied to the "IT Times" reporter's question about "how to view the rise of new platforms such as Temu", "At present, the proportion of global retail e-commerce in global retail is 195%, this market is still very large. As of the third quarter of 2023, 60% of Amazon's total global sales come from third-party sellers. As of June 2023, the number of Chinese sellers on Amazon who have deployed both B-end and C-end e-commerce businesses has increased by nearly 90% compared with three years ago. Chinese sellers have a strong sense of innovation and should extend to both ends of the value chain. Amazon is optimistic about the export cross-border e-commerce track and hopes to work together to make the cross-border e-commerce market bigger. ”
Typesetting Ji Jiaying.
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