Term Recruitment is Over

Love it or hate it, you have to admit it Already had a banger year. Launched in late 2022, the Chinese ecommerce site, known for selling a wide range of products at surprisingly low prices, only took two years to become popular in the US. Over the past 12 months, it has topped the download charts, surpassing other virus programs such as ChatGPT and Threadand is now active in many countries around the world. Even its biggest rival, Amazon, recently launched a I’m afraid of clones called Amazon Haul which is very similar to the original, in terms of its delivery methods and user interface.

Temu is expected to earn more than $50 billion in total sales this year, according to analysts from AB Bernstein and Tech Buzz China, which could triple its figure by 2023. Temu’s website has now found about 700 million times around the world every month, and Apple recently revealed that it was deeply discounted 2024 app for iPhones in the US.

The term has now replaced Wish, an online shopping site that once existed, in the cultural lexicon as a knock-off brand or budget-friendly alternative. The winner of Timothée Chalamet’s recent competition in New York City, for example, calls himself “Ago-thée Chalamet.” Tens of millions of ordinary people have tried to use the program, many of whom learned about it through one of Temu’s seemingly inevitable and persistent advertisements. At this point, your grandfather maybe they are also obsessed with Temu.

“My friends and family didn’t know what it was like in 2023 now,” says Moira Weigel, an assistant professor at Harvard University who studies online marketing. “Relatives who only know that I’m studying in China or doing business can say, ‘You should know all about Temu,’ in a way that didn’t happen a year ago.”

Weigel says Temu has done several things right, including identifying the right suppliers in China, targeting the right customer segments, and finding a cost-effective way to ship products from one place to another. That prompted the shopping center to defy earlier predictions that it would burn through cash reserves and go up in flames.

Temu, which is owned by PDD, one of China’s largest e-commerce giants, is moving at a pace that its Western counterparts cannot understand, says Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of ecommerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse. “If you look at a company like Temu, it travels 1,000 kilometers per hour,” he says.