Shop through Temu can make you feel like you’re playing an arcade game. Instead of using a joystick-controlled claw to grab a toy, visitors to the online marketplace maneuver their computer mice or cell phone screens to browse colorful gadgets, accessories and trinkets with prices that look too good to refuse.
A pop-up spinning wheel offers the chance to win a discount coupon. Changing captions warn that a camouflage balaclava under $2 and a skeleton hand back scratcher worth $1.23 are “almost sold out.” A flame symbol indicates that a plush cat print hoodie worth $9.69 is selling quickly. A timed selection of discounted items adds to the sense of urgency.
Welcome to the new online world of impulse buying, a place of guilty pleasures where the selection is huge, every day is Cyber Monday, and an instant dopamine hit that will have faded by the time your package arrives is always just a click away.
By all accounts, we live in an era of accelerating consumerism, an era in which Temu, owned by Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, and Shein, his fierce rivalequipped with social media savvy and an endless range of cheap goods, most of which are shipped directly from merchants in China based on real-time demand.
The two platforms’ business models, combined with the avalanche of digital or influencer advertising, have allowed them to give Western retailers a run for their money this year. holiday shopping season.
Software company Salesforce said it expects about one in five online purchases in the US, UK, Australia and Canada will be made through four online marketplaces based or founded in Asia: Shein, Temu, TikTok Shop – the e-commerce branch of video sharing platform TikTok and AliExpress.
Salesforce analysts said they expect to bring in about $160 billion in global sales outside China. Most of the sales go to Temu and Shein, a private company believed to be in charge global fast fashion market of income.
Lisa Xiaoli Neville, a nonprofit manager living in Los Angeles, is sold on Shein. The bedroom of her home is filled with jeans, shoes, press-on nails and other items from the high-speed fashion retailer, all of which she collected after hitting the platform to buy a $2 pair of earrings that she featured in a Facebook ad saw. .
Neville, 46, estimates she spends at least $75 a month on Shein products. A $2 eggshell opener, a portable apple peeler and an apple corer — both of which cost less than $5 — are among the quirky, single-use kitchen tools taking up drawers. She admits she doesn’t need them because she “don’t even cook like that.” Moreover, she is allergic to apples.
‘I don’t eat apples. It’ll kill me,’ Neville said, laughing. “But I still want the core work.”
Now based in Singapore, Shein uses some of the same web design features as Temu’s, such as pop-up coupons and ads, to convince shoppers to keep clicking, but it seems a bit more reserved in its approach.
First of all, Shein focuses on young women through partnerships with social media influencers. If you search the company’s name on video platforms, you’ll come across creators promoting Shein’s Black Friday sales event and showing off the dozens of trendy clothes and accessories they got for relatively little money.
But the Shein-focused content also includes videos of TikTokers saying they’re ashamed to admit they’ve shopped there, and critics lashing out at fans for not taking into account the damage to the environment or possible labor abuse associated with products that are rapidly produced and shipped worldwide.
Neville has already selected Christmas gifts for family and friends on the site. Most of the products in her online shopping cart cost less than $10, including graphic T-shirts she wants to buy for her son and jeans and loafers for her daughter. All told, she plans to spend about $200 on gifts, significantly less than the $500 she spent at other stores in recent years.
“The images just make you want to spend more money,” she said, referring to the clothes on Shein’s site. “They’re really cheap and everything is just so cute.”
Unlike Shein, Temu’s appeal extends across age groups and genders. The platform is the world’s second most visited online shopping site, software company Zekerweb reported in September. Customers look for practical items such as doormats and crazy products such as a whiskey bottle in the shape of a vintage mobile phone from the nineties.
Temu advertised Black Friday bargains on some items at more than 70% off the recommended retail price. Making a purchase can quickly result in receiving dozens of emails with free giveaways. The caveat: Customers have to buy more products.
Ellen Flowers, 36, a lifestyle blogger living in Dallas, recently decided to pair a $3,500 dining table with $25 dining room chairs from Temu to save money. She also bought clothes from Temu. The quality or fit wasn’t always great, so Flowers donated some unwanted pieces to thrift stores to avoid paying return shipping fees, which would cost almost as much as the clothes.
Flowers planned to buy stocking stuffers on Temu, as well as baubles for an ornament swap party in early December. She also wanted to buy necklaces and bracelets for an activity at her 5-year-old niece’s upcoming birthday party.
“I love buying gifts for my nieces,” Flowers says. “Because they are young, they don’t need the Louis Vuitton handbag. I can give them a nice handbag from Temu. Then within a month they lose interest and I buy another one.’
Despite their rise, Temu and Shein have proven particularly ripe for adversity. Last year one coalition of nameless brands and organizations launched a campaign to oppose Shein in Washington. US lawmakers have done so too raised the possibility that Temu allows goods made with forced labor to enter the country.
More recently, the Biden administration has proposed rules that would do just that crack down on a trade rule known as the de minimis exception, which allowed many cheap products to enter the US duty-free. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to deliver a big blow tariffs on goods from Chinaa move that would likely increase prices across the retail world.
Both Shein and Temu have set up warehouses in the US to speed up delivery times and help them better compete with Amazon, which is trying to erode their price advantage by a new storefront which also ships products directly from China.
Meanwhile, Temu is hiring Chinese traders to stock inventory in the US, a move that would allow the company to be less exposed to changes around the de minimus trade rule, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse.
The change comes as both Shein and Temu try to expand beyond the bargain-hungry shoppers who made their platforms popular. Temu is allowing sellers to ship products to customers from local U.S. warehouses and says the move will allow the company to sell larger items such as furniture while expanding its selection of high-end items.
Meanwhile, US children’s clothing retailer The Children’s Place signed a deal last month to distribute its products through the Shein’s platform. Last year, Shein started doing business with women’s fashion retailer Forever 21. It has been working to recruit other brands and is reportedly hoping to list on the London Stock Exchange.