This obscure buying app Temu is now America’s most downloaded

Take a deep breath. The Chinese language Communist Social gathering Congress information cycle is (mainly) over. 

There are numerous vital issues from the high-level political meeting to speak about, largely round understanding what the brand new get together management means for China’s future, however I’ll level you to political reporters who’re actual specialists in all this down under. 

As an alternative, I need to speak about one thing huge you in all probability missed final week: There’s a brand new Chinese language e-commerce app that’s quietly however shortly rising. It’s referred to as Temu. And on October 17, it turned essentially the most downloaded buying app in the US.

It’s a fairly large deal for Temu to beat Amazon, Walmart, and its Chinese language competitor Shein, particularly as a result of your fast response might be What? I’ve by no means even heard of Temu! 

Effectively, you’re in good firm. The app stays obscure amongst most individuals, although it marks one other high-profile try by yet one more Chinese language tech big—after Alibaba, Shein, and ByteDance—to strive its luck within the American e-commerce market. 

Temu (btw, there’s no official steerage on how one can pronounce the title, however I’ve been saying tee-moo) is a worldwide model of Chinese language e-commerce firm Pinduoduo. Based in 2015, it entered a market that had been dominated by Alibaba for over a decade, but it managed to rise by the competitors and, in 2020, changed Alibaba as the corporate with essentially the most e-commerce clients in China. Right now, Pinduoduo has over 730 million month-to-month lively customers—greater than two occasions the US inhabitants!—and is understood for each extraordinarily low-cost costs and modern gimmicks that maintain customers hooked.

Nonetheless, Pinduoduo has remained an unfamiliar title outdoors the nation. So how did Temu rise to the highest of the iOS App Retailer’s buying chart? 

“I consider it’s pushed nearly solely by adverts,” says Juozas Kaziukėnas, who based the e-commerce analyst agency Market Pulse, “as a result of I’m seeing comparatively no mentions of Temu on social media. That makes me consider that there’s little or no natural recognition of the model but.”