ccording to statistics released by Statista, the number of users of Temu in the United States has exceeded 100 million. According to Eric Sheridan, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, by the end of the second quarter of this year, Temu had been downloaded more than 120 million times in the world, ranking among the top ten in the global application download list.
It is an amazing achievement to achieve over 100 million users within one year. It took JD.COM 9 years to reach this figure, Taobao 5 years, and even Pinduoduo 1 year and 3 months in the domestic market.
Temu’s expansion speed is also amazing. In the past year, Temu has opened sites in 36 countries or regions, covering North America, South America, Oceania, West Asia, East Asia and other regions. As far as geographical breadth is concerned, even a cross-border e-commerce giant like SHEIN, who has been deeply involved in the international market for decades, cannot compare with it.
In terms of GMV (total volume of commodity transactions), the data of YipitData, a research organization, shows that in May this year, the GMV of Temu reached 635 million US dollars, and it is showing an increasing trend. According to this data, it can be speculated that Temu is expected to achieve the goal of annual GMV reaching 10 billion US dollars.
However, it is worth noting that although Temu is getting faster and faster on the road of expansion, some problems are also exposed.
The first is the high cost. According to the analysis of Wired, an overseas new economic magazine, Temu lost an average of $30 per order when trying to enter the American market. In addition, according to the data of China Merchants Securities in China, after the expansion of Temu’s business in Canadian, Australian and New Zealand markets, it is estimated that the annual loss may be between RMB 4.15 billion and RMB 6.73 billion.
Considering Temu’s low-cost subsidy and extensive advertising, its cost is quite high, and how to make a profit will become a huge challenge.
In addition, Temu is also facing the problem of “explosion”. In mid-March this year, the news of Temu’s explosion caused an uproar in the seller circle. The reason is that Temu’s investment manager issued a notice to suspend the receipt of goods and upgrade the warehouse, which caused some sellers’ inventory to be unable to be put on the shelves and the orders already placed were also affected. This is mainly due to the rapid expansion of Temu overseas, but the domestic storage capacity and operation efficiency established in the early days have not kept pace with the new demand.
In addition, Temu is also caught in a legal dispute with e-commerce giants such as SHEIN. In December, 2022, SHEIN filed a lawsuit against Temu in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, accusing Temu of signing a social media online celebrity, making false propaganda and slandering SHEIN, and tricking users into downloading Temu applications by impersonating social media accounts.
Post time: Aug-28-2023