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Temu's ad spend soars as it embarks on a marketing blitz
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoTime to stop subsidizing their shipping.
- nickthegreek 3y agoFor those who don't know what this is referencing: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/key-trade-loophole-keeps-cheap-chinese-products-flowing-us-2023-08-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/key-trade-l...
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoThe Chinese stopped subsiding shipping a while ago, it's why you have to actually pay for shipping on aliexpress now.
- RankingMember 3y agoI bought something on AliExpress recently and they seem to have changed things up so that there's a second shipping option called "Choice" that only certain items apply to. I'm not sure if they've started putting high-popularity items in stateside distribution centers or what, but they ship these items for free with a $10 minimum order.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alwa 3y agoAre you referring to the USPS’ ePacket service, which subsidizes small packages from Hong Kong and China to the extent that it’s cheaper to ship from there than to ship domestically? E.g. per [0]: > As Amazon’s Vice President of Global Policy Paul Misener pointed out: > “The cost to ship a one-pound package from South Carolina to New York City would run nearly $6; from Beijing to NYC: $3.66.” > While sending that same one-pound package from New York City back to Beijing via USPS International Mail would cost in the ballpark of $50. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps-epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-chinese-e-commerce-merchants-to-ship-to-the-usa-cheap/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-...
- siruncledrew 3y agoMass shippers like Aliexpress already stopped using ePacket. Ali has their own Cainiao. The big companies realized if they do the Amazon model and build their own logistics network for cross-Pacific sea/air freight, the long-term savings are huge. Even within the US, Amazon already has planes, trains, and automobiles. Why pay USPS and be at the mercy of government bureaucracy when you own your own integrated logistics stack.
- malfist 3y agoPeople complain about how bad of a flea market Amazon has turned into, are people really shopping on temu?
- nickthegreek 3y agohttps://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-commerce-platform-temu-drawing-shoppers-us-dollar-stores-data-2023-12-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-c... >As of last month, Temu accounted for nearly 17% of market share in the United States within the discount stores categories, according to data analytics firm Earnest Analytics.
- candiddevmike 3y agoDon't you want to shop like a billionaire (in an online flea market)?
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoHaha the fact that their slogan is act like a billionaire is just so amazing. Goes to show how much of the western world like money and want to appear wealthy. We really need to dig deep and get over thinking money == success.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kaibee 3y agoWhy settle for the 2nd best flea market?
- RankingMember 3y agoThe appeal of Temu and AliExpress is that a lot of the same stuff you'd buy on Amazon is there for sometimes 25% or 50% of the cost- you just have to wait a little longer to get it. That said, for however fake or skewed Amazon's reviews are, AliExpress and Temu's reviews are another level of useless. Most of the pictures are simply of packaged items, and the reviews themselves are variations of "Just got it haven't used it yet 5 stars!". My hunch is that they ran promotions to get people to write reviews at some point and got a lot of terrible, useless reviews in exchange.
- swozey 3y agoIt's working, never heard of it until 1-2 months ago now see it almost every day
- RGamma 3y agoYeah, the threshold to virality has been crossed. Same playbook as (ugh) TikTok.
- lph 3y agoEvery ad I've seen from Temu is either AI-fabricated non-existent products, or real products with impossibly low prices. I wish somebody would sue them into the ground for false advertising.
- RankingMember 3y agoIn my experience, they're legit, but only for first-time customers. They basically eat the cost of the difference to get you in the door.
- ortusdux 3y agoAliexpress does this as well. You have to log in to see the real pricing.
- oh_sigh 3y agoIt might just be me, but every Temu ad I see is a normalish product, but the image is designed to look like something sexy or illicit when viewed as a small thumbnail.
- subsubzero 3y agoYou seem like someone who doesn't want to shop like a billionaire! In all seriousness I 100% agree, I feel like this company is a massive house of cards that will end up like Evergrande etc. What is crazy is almost every site I visit I see a Temu ad so their ad spend is borderline insane to begin with, it growing larger is even more unbelievable.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoJust use AliExpress
- stavros 3y agoSeriously, isn't Temu just a more expensive AliExpress?
- RankingMember 3y agoAliExpress has clearly taken steps to try and regain market share they're losing to Temu. They now have faster shipping options (whereas previously everything I ordered on AliExpress took 4-6 weeks I can get things in 10 days now) and seem to have ramped up their coupons.
- twisteriffic 3y agoI would if their search weren't so utterly useless
- RankingMember 3y agoIt's awful, and I feel like Temu uses the exact same engine because it's equally terrible.
- jonatron 3y agoReminder PinDuoDuo, of PDD Holdings like Temu is, hire android reverse engineers [1], and have been had their app removed because it contained malware[2]. Don't install the Temu app. [1] https://github.com/jonatron/randomstuff/blob/main/Screenshot%20from%202023-03-28%2018-07-36.png https://github.com/jonatron/randomstuff/blob/main/Screenshot... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinduoduo
- notso411 3y ago[dead]
- pavlov 3y agoIsn’t Temu just Wish all over again?
- bastawhiz 3y agoPretty much, same with SHEIN. I spend a lot of time thinking about how these companies are basically just selling garbage (or rather, soon-to-be-garbage). Beyond the impact of manufacturing, shipping, and disposing of this junk, it's normalizing the idea of "you can have whatever you want but it'll be just passable enough that you don't regret buying it, and maybe even replace it" in our culture.
- john-tells-all 3y agoOne Youtuber used a phrase that stuck with me: "Manufactured E-Waste". That is, the item is so poorly made, with such terrible security or electrical fire hazard, that no one should use it. The item was created new, but can never safely deliver any value to anyone. It goes directly from the factory to the trash heap.
- mlrtime 3y agoYou both aren't wrong, but these sites are getting more popular because we are still buying "Manufactured E-Waste" from Amazon for 2-3x price. You can sometimes find the EXACT same product for half price. People have been voting that they want cheap not good for awhile now.
- catapart 3y agoTemu has all of the hallmarks of a "big tent" dark money scheme that rolls in a lot of unseemly business into one constantly-changing target. Big enough to force public awareness of any brand they make up, and obfuscated enough to switch brand names the minute one becomes toxic. It's like a hyper-magnified (possibly government-sponsored) "facebook ad scheme" where they rip off whoever they can and as soon as there's heat, the spin up another website and burn the old profile. Only here, it's a whole new brand, complete with corporate bona fides. Coupled with the reported treatment of specific demographics, there's evidence to suspect a coordinated effort to generate cheap 'knockoff' products (a popular scheme) with slave labor (a common abuse) which are funneled into instant-established brands (the novel addition) to make as much money as possible before the brand has been tarnished, and then swapping the supply chain to a new brand, to obfuscate the malfeasance and absolve themselves of the previous company's responsibilities (the widespread "facebook ad scheme"). So, a billionaire-level version of the bullshit social media scams. And, okay, fine, I'm a conspiracy theorist for not providing any evidence. But nothing I've presumed is implausible, even if it's not true of Temu. So I suppose commenting about it, here, is just a way to express my concern over what we think could be done if someone was out there doing this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _chu1 3y agoWhy buy from any of these sketchy Chinese platforms? I wouldn't feel safe giving them any of my credit/debit card information, let alone being installed on one of my devices.
- tejohnso 3y agoWhy would your bank information be involved?
- RankingMember 3y agoTheir relationship is with your credit card provider- no one's giving AliExpress or Temu their bank info.
- _chu1 3y agoForgot that when I typed that, updated
- rcpt 3y agoLots of the same stuff as Amazon but way cheaper.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoAmazon is also a sketchy Chinese platform now. There is no alternative. We killed local manufacturing and sustainability a long time ago.
- jprete 3y agoI think the big problem with Amazon is that they stopped caring about the quality and provenance of the products on their platform. Other retailers do exist who have more of a stake in the quality of the goods they sell.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoAliexpress seems fairly safe. And you can get some niche things. Eg, I managed to get replacement headphone ear pads for a good price. Took forever to arrive, but they were cheap enough to risk it. If I ever need a replacement part, I check Aliexpress.
- jprete 3y agoI can tell YouTube to never recommend a particular channel again, but, sadly, I can't tell YouTube to never show me another Temu ad.
- kybernetyk 3y agoAdblock
- antisthenes 3y agoLow margin businesses that sell cheap Chinese junk are not sustainable in the long run when you factor in how much of the margin advertisement eats up. Source: 11 years in e-commerce.
- RankingMember 3y agoAliExpress has been around since 2010. I'm not saying there's nothing shady going on in their funding scheme, but clearly someone thinks they're worth continuing to pump money into.
- antisthenes 3y agoAliexpress is a division of Alibaba Group, which likely makes the bulk of their profits through their B2B sales. They don't provide separate financials for it, or even its approximate size compared to other components of the group. My bet is Aliexpress has slightly negative margins up to -5%, and makes up to maybe 10% of total revenue. In other words, it could operate like this forever, being subsidized by more profitable components. It could also be slightly profitable, I'm not sure.
- pygar 3y agotemu's exact same cheap junk is cheaper then amazon's cheap junk but with a $20 minimum spend. Occasionally you'll find a category that is so marked up compared to actual manufacturing costs that temu seems like a fantastic deal (eg mechanical keyboards). pretty soon you run out of stuff you want to buy anyway.
- kybernetyk 3y agoTemu sells low end trash. The dollar store of the internet. I can’t imagine how this would be sustainable in the long run.
- siruncledrew 3y agoIMO, I'd expect to see more international D2C start eating the lunch of US retailers as the D2C companies see they can make more money and still offer lower price points. If the main value proposition of retailers is importing goods they don't produce and marking them up to sell to Americans, that's a shaky business model, especially in the age of ecommerce.