Temu becomes the world's second largest e-commerce platform!

In 2023, the expansion of China's cross-border platforms overseas seemed to have pressed the accelerator.

Take Temu as an example. It has frequently expanded new sites since its launch in North America. Currently, it has been launched in 48 countries around the world and achieved sales of over US$5 billion in the third quarter of last year.

According to data released by SimilarWeb, by December last year, Temu's global unique customer visits had reached 467 million, tied with AliExpress and ranked second in the world. The first was Amazon, with 2.345 billion visitors.

However, half a year ago, Temu's global visitor volume was only 226.3 million users, ranking fourth in the world. At that time, Amazon ranked first with 2.354 billion users, and AliExpress ranked second with 421.8 million users.

In other words, Temu grew by 241 million users in half a year, doubling its size.

I still remember that when Temu first went online in the United States ( September 2022), its monthly GMV was only 3 million US dollars; and there was news some time ago (November 2023) that Temu set its total GMV in 2024 at 30 billion US dollars, which shows how strong Temu's momentum is.

In addition, Temu’s app also achieved “top ranking” in multiple countries, topping the charts in the United States for 170 days, Canada for 125 days, and Australia for 20 days.

It can be seen that not only Chinese people cannot escape the "temptation of low prices", but foreigners cannot escape it either.

In fact, Temu's rapid growth overseas is not only due to its own vigorous development, but also has a lot to do with good timing.

Against the backdrop of inflation, “affordable consumption” has risen overseas, and domestic cross-border e-commerce platforms have become popular overseas with their “cost-effectiveness” advantage. In a research report released at the end of last month, CITIC Securities also mentioned that Temu’s rapid growth reflects that overseas markets also attach great importance to cost-effectiveness.

Take South Korea, where consumption is downgrading, as an example. As prices continue to rise, Korean consumers are becoming more and more sensitive to commodity prices and are demanding lower-priced goods. Based on this, Chinese platforms Temu and AliExpress, which focus on cost-effectiveness, have achieved rapid growth here and become the country's APP with the most new users in 2023.

Moreover, in order to cater to the needs of consumers, major e-commerce platforms in South Korea have also begun to launch low-price product activities: 11th Street launched the "9,900 won store" section in September last year, and its average daily sales in October increased by 80% month-on-month; TMON launched the "10,000 won happiness" section last year, and its sales also increased by 98% compared with the same period last year.

If the Korean market is not convincing enough, let's take a look at the American market.

According to Earnest Analytics, as of November last year, Temu accounted for nearly 17% of the U.S. discount retail market. Although it was lower than the 43% of the old brands Dollar General and 28% of Dollar Tree, in January last year, Dollar General's market share was 57% and Dollar Tree's market share was 32%.

Although domestic platforms are making rapid advances, foreign platforms are not sitting still. Take the US market for example, Amazon, Target and Walmart are working hard to improve their delivery speeds to maintain their competitive advantage over Chinese platforms. We should keep our eyes open for the subsequent "market share" battle. We believe that with China's supply chain advantages and policy support, Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms will become more dazzling and eye-catching in the international market.

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