After appearing on the Let’s Talk Marketplace podcast in June to discuss Temu, Valerie and Ingrid invited ChinaTalk’s Ed Sander to return for an update in September. Valerie Dichtl shared the following announcement.
Almost 700 million visits per month, making it the second most-visited e-commerce site in the world!
Who is it? It’s… that’s right, Temu. And because Temu is so successful, the Chinese platform is facing attacks from all sides: competitor SHEIN is suing Temu for product piracy, while the US and Europe are planning to protect their markets and local providers by imposing tariffs on packages from China. And Temu? It is targeting the US and Europe and opening up to sellers based in these countries.
The reason: if the package tariffs actually come into force in 2028, Temu can sell its goods through sellers in the US and Europe, thus avoiding import duties. “Temu is enormously agile. It will have solved the problem before it becomes real,” says Ed Sander. Ed is THE China expert and because of that, Ingrid and I invited him again to our podcast “Let’ talk Marketplac”e. In the new episode 79 we discussed with him
– why Shein, Temu and Amazon hypocritically accuse each other of their own actions or offenses
– how Temu puts pressure on Chinese manufacturers and why Shein benefits from it
– why Amazon is presenting this manufacturer as a “friendly” alternative to Temu
– why Temu has to remain profitable and why the share price has nevertheless crashed
– why it is hypocritical to only now denounce the working conditions and cheap production when the factories sell directly to Western consumers and Western brands no longer benefit from them
If you also want to know why Shein is copying Temu’s semi-managed model and why Temu is working on an open third-party model, then tune in to episode 79 now!
Spotify link
Apple podcast link
The interview starts at 19 minutes into the show.