Is Temu Legit? A [2023] Review: The Good and the Bad

A few months ago Amazon came up with a new competitor in the United States. Temu has entered the US market with force, and the key to its success lies in aggressive marketing, prices that are almost impossible to compete with, and the gamification of its content. A complex and perfectly studied scheme to fully break into electronic commerce from one of the wings that generates the most income.

An inside look at Temu

Backed by PDD Holdings, the Chinese giant launched its online store in the United States in an unstoppable way. Proof of this was his Super Bowl ad , with his catchphrase “shop like a billionaire.” Since September 2022, it has been operating in this country with demolition prices and with a strategy similar to Shein , or even TikTok at the time.

TEMU REVIEW : Another e-commerce titan is born

And it is that these types of giants are the only ones that seem to be able to stand up to titans like Amazon, Walmart or Target in the United States. But this does not end here, since Temu will continue to expand. The last territory to conquer was Canada , where it has been offering its services since February.

According to CNN data , his app was downloaded more than 24 million times , accumulating more than 11 million active users each month. While the Super Bowl announcement further cemented his success, Temu was already racking up these staggering numbers before the televised announcement during the sporting event. In fact, during the fourth quarter of 2022, Temu already surpassed Amazon and the other stores mentioned above in the lists of most popular apps in the United States.

The secret of its success seems to lie above all in its colossal catalog and low cost prices , even reaching discounts of up to 89% . Along with this, it is also worth noting its extensive marketing maneuver perpetrated by its managers.

To hook the consumer, Temu also offers various games of chance with which to get discounts and coupons. Aggressive mechanisms to convince the user to buy massively. Referral strategies also seem to be a fact in Temu, where it is possible to get prizes by showing the application to other users. As Rest of the World mentions, among its many games there is one in which the user must grow virtual fruit trees with friends to get real boxes of fruit, in addition to the typical roulette wheels to get discount coupons.

Aggressive marketing, demolition prices and special care on your website

If we take a look at their website, we see that Temu is very similar to proposals like Aliexpress or Shein, with great discounts on the front page and all light and color. Not only that, but you seem to have put a lot of time into designing and optimizing your website, with a much more avid response than the examples mentioned above.

“Temu takes advantage of the wide and deep network of merchants, logistics partners and ecosystem built over the years by the parent company PDD Holdings”, details the company itself , which ensures that in 2021 alone PDD Holdings generated 14,700 million dollars in revenue .

It makes all the sense in the world that Temu wanted to expand in the United States first. It is the cradle of Amazon, a country in which, according to Innovell, it obtains close to 67% of its total income. Other giants such as Alibaba or JD.com also sought to expand in the same way, and it seems that Temu is following in the footsteps of those mentioned to become another great arm of electronic commerce .

For now, it seems that Temu is targeting the low-cost market in the United States, wanting to be the cheap alternative to stores such as Amazon or even Shein. Time will give us more details about its progress in this country, and its possible expansion to other territories.