Temu is an online shopping website that has recently been trending and taking the world by storm, leaving many people comparing it to Amazon. Launched in Sept. 2022, Temu, also known as Pinduoduo, is currently owned and operated by PDD Holdings. Both affordable and good quality, it’s hard to find a bad deal on Temu. From clothing, furniture, home appliances, and sports equipment, to electronics, you can pretty much find anything on Temu. With the large selections and categories on the website, you’ll surely find something that catches your eye. Temu has had more downloads than other apps like Youtube and Tiktok in the last two months, but not overall.

The incredibly low prices of consumer goods on the website may be due to the fact that all goods are shipped directly from China’s factories and warehouses. Since the first day it was released, Temu has been receiving nothing but endless praise and gaining customers day by day. However, some people are criticizing Temu saying that their orders arrived a lot later than the estimated delivery time and the products are lower quality than expected. A number of people are saying that their items never arrived, or took weeks or even months to arrive. Temu currently has 1,199 reviews and an average rating of three stars on TrustPilot Reviews, an online review community of people that brings businesses and consumers together while using genuine feedback from customers.

Another reason why Temu is able to keep all the products at extremely low prices is that it has a way to send customer feedback back to manufacturers, which notifies them of the specific products that customers want and when they need to produce sought-after or high-demand products. Not only are all products sold at affordable prices, but Temu also offers discounts and gives out free items as long as you promote the app and encourage friends and families to sign up.

Unlike shopping brands like Shein, Temu is said to be environmentally ethical considering that their goal isn’t for millions and billions of apparel to eventually end up in landfills. Since its focus isn’t particularly stay on top of fashion trends, Temu is able to lessen waste by determining customers’ desired products. 

This isn’t always the case, however, with reviews of people saying that the products are not at all good quality, with some of the items in such bad condition that they’re impossible to use. However, Temu offers $5 credit for packages bought with shipping that arrived later than expected. 

“This is an interesting example of the manufacturing base in China getting sufficiently sophisticated that it no longer feels it needs to go through distributors,” Douglas Schmidt, a professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University states.“They’re selling directly to consumers. And there are a lot of people who are hurting economically and looking for a bargain.”

With the takeover of this e-commerce website, how will this impact the future of other American companies and websites? If more and more people flock to Temu to buy products and fewer people are on other shopping sites like Amazon, it would increase the pressure on those websites. There’s a possibility that they might start lowering their prices as well, following the success of Temu to attract more customers to their websites.

Temu may be taking over the world now, but who knows what will happen in the future? With more and more advances in technology and society, the success that Temu is experiencing right now isn’t 100% guaranteed. This e-commerce website may give rise to other companies in the future to better suit consumers’ needs and desires. Whether you use it or not, the impact it has on the world is noticeable.

Photo by Ainsley Najafzadeh