Fast Facts: Temu hits southeast Asian markets

In early October, Temu swiftly entered the markets of Vietnam and Brunei. As of now, it has become available in a total of 5 countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brunei.

Officially luanched in the US market in September 2022, Temu is a cross-border e-commerce platform under China's leading online retalier Pinduoduo.

With the slogan of "Team Up, Price Down", Temu focuses on reducing prices through the collective purchases by consumers. It highly resembles the current business model of Pinduoduo in China, which employs a strategy of low prices and big discounts. For instance, Temu provides overseas consumers overseas with a discount of up to 90% as well as a policy of 90-day free refund.

Backed by China's strong manufacturing capacity, Temus adopts a full-hosting model, providing a series of services encorporating operation, promotion, warehousing, distribution and after-sales. Meanwhile, online sellers are mainly responsible for offering prices and goods to the warehouses in China.

  

This model effectively lowers the threshold for enterprises to go overseas, and quickly expands Temu's market to more than 50 countries and regions across the world, including North America, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania.

According to the statistics of Sensor Tower, the number of Temu app users ranked the third among major e-commerce platforms worldwide, accounting for 91% of Amazon's users in August, 2024.

  

Temu is facing both opportunities and challenges.

Previously, Indonesia introduced a series of new regulations prohibiting social media from being used as a platform for selling commodities. Moreover, the exchanges of whatever imported goods worth less than $100 has been prohibited.

Currently, Temu only accepts credit card payments in the Vietnamese market and doesn't not support local e-wallets. Temu adopts a three-stage shipping model, involving the logistics services from China to overseas. Therefore, working with USPS, UPS, DHL or local postal services seems to be an essential and effective means for Temu to enter and tap the markets in many countries.

  

Temu is a rapidly growing enterprise. To compete with other platforms such as TikTok, Lazada, Shopee while achiving sustainble growth in the market of Southeast Asia, however, Temu still needs to tackle a series of challenges, including its market share, difficulties on logistics and payment services, as well as the changes of local polices.

Sources: YICC and AI photos