New on-line superstore surpasses Amazon and Walmart to turn into most downloaded app in US

A new online shopping system joined to one particular of China’s leading shops has quickly develop into the most downloaded application in the United States, surpassing Amazon and Walmart. Now it is wanting to capitalize from an overall look on America’s most important stage.

Temu, a Boston-primarily based on line retailer that shares the exact same owner as Chinese social commerce large Pinduoduo, produced its Super Bowl debut on Sunday.

Temu, which runs an on the net superstore for practically every little thing — from residence merchandise to clothing to electronics — unveiled a industrial throughout the game that encouraged buyers to “shop like a billionaire.”

The pitch? You do not have to be one.

“Through the greatest phase doable, we want to share with our customers that they can store with a perception of freedom for the reason that of the price we give,” a Temu spokesperson informed CNN in a statement.

The 30-next place demonstrates the company’s proposition to consumers: Really feel like you are splurging by getting lots of stuff cheaply. A woman’s swimsuit on Temu fees just $6.50, though a pair of wi-fi earphones is priced at $8.50. An eyebrow trimmer expenditures 90 cents.

These amazingly low prices — by Western standards, at least — have drawn comparisons to Shein, the Chinese rapidly trend upstart that also presents a large collection of affordable outfits and house goods, and has made significant inroads into marketplaces such as the United States.

Shein is viewed as just one of Temu’s opponents, together with US-based mostly low cost retailer Wish and Alibaba’s AliExpress, in accordance to Coresight Investigate.

Climbing the charts

Temu, pronounced “tee-moo,” was launched last year by PDD, its US-shown guardian organization formerly identified as Pinduoduo. The corporation officially changed its identify just this month.

PDD’s subsidiary Pinduoduo is a single of China’s most well known e-commerce platforms with roughly 900 million customers. It designed its title with a team-buying small business model, enabling persons to save cash by enlisting friends to invest in the identical product in bulk.

On its site, Temu suggests it makes use of its mum or dad company’s “vast and deep community … designed above the decades to provide a huge assortment of inexpensive excellent merchandise.”

Considering that its rollout in September, the application has been downloaded 24 million instances, racking up additional than 11 million month to month active users, according to Sensor Tower.

In the fourth quarter of previous yr, US application installations for Temu exceeded individuals for Amazon, Walmart and Goal, in accordance to Abe Yousef, a senior insights analyst at the analytics firm Sensor Tower.

“Temu soared to the best of both of those US app shop charts in November, in which the app however retains the prime place now,” he told CNN, referring to iOS and Android mobile app stores.

Yousef mentioned the enterprise had been notably successful at acquiring new end users by offering very minimal selling prices and in-app flash bargains, this sort of as 89% off particular objects.

The business is by now eyeing new territory. This thirty day period, Temu said on Twitter that it plans to broaden to Canada.

‘Too cheap’?

Michael Felice, an associate partner at management consulting business Kearney, said Temu stood out simply by promoting solutions without having significant markups.

“Temu may well be exposing a white house in the market whereby brand names have been making at excessive reduced price tag, and alongside the value chain there is been so a great deal bloated price tag passed on for margin,” he explained to CNN.

“That mentioned, American customers might not even be prepared to settle for some of these cost details … There’s normally the query, ‘is it too inexpensive to be very good?’”

Deborah Weinswig, CEO of Coresight Analysis, has cautioned that it may well be also early to tell irrespective of whether Temu will be capable to preserve all those incredibly minimal rates, absolutely free shipping and delivery and other perks.

“Temu aims to carry on to experiment in marketing and choices, which is feasible thanks to its useful resource-abundant father or mother business,” she wrote in a report.

Its launch, she mentioned, “comes at an opportune instant, as people search for price amid nonetheless-elevated inflation and a diploma of financial uncertainty.”

The-CNN-Wire
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