If you’ve been on the internet at all in the last year, the chances are you’ve seen ads for a site called ‘Temu’. They seemed to spring from nowhere, and the distinctive orange ads are everywhere, popping up aggressively in social media feeds, in Google searches – they’re even being promoted by influencers, who presumably get commission whenever someone signs up using the link they provide.
On the face of it, this might seem pretty innocuous – after all, advertising makes sense for an online marketplace – but is it really?
What is Temu?
Temu is an online marketplace that launched in the UK in April 2023, selling almost unbelievably cheap items from toilet brushes to hair grips. So how can they make money if they’re selling such cheap products?
Selling tactics
The ads are created to appeal to young consumers especially, who are looking to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ on a budget. The Temu ad shown to American consumers during the Super Bowl in 2023, promised ‘shopping like a billionaire’ to promote this concept. They also rely on heavy discounts and big sales to attract people to make impulse purchases.
Shipping from China
Customers in the UK have longer wait times, as it can take quite a while for delivery due to the items being shipped directly from China. Although it takes longer, this is undoubtedly one of the reasons for such low prices, as the cost of manufacturing in China is incredibly low.
Do they sell customer data?
Anecdotally there have been reports online of people’s card details being compromised after they’ve purchased items from Temu, Temu denies selling data, and this hasn’t been proven. Security concerns have been raised about the app, with cybersecurity experts stating the complexity of the app’s code making it difficult to analyse is a red flag, as it indicates there’s something they may wish to hide.
Temu shares its parent company, PDD Holdings, with selling platform Pinduoduo, and the Pinduodo app has previously been suspended from the Google app store, after malware was detected in the app – that seems a little close to home!
Although it’s undoubtedly a legitimate selling site, the saying goes that if ‘something seems too good to be true then it probably is’, and that’s worth bearing in mind when making informed online purchases from anywhere online.
