Every Question You Have About Temu, Answered (2024)

retail rabbit hole May 9, 2024

How are these headphones $4.98? And every other question you have about the chaotic new Everything Store.

By Natalie So, a writer in San Francisco. Her story, ARISTOCRAT INC., about chip robberies in the early days of Silicon Valley, was nominated for a National Magazine Award.

Animation: Giorgia Ascolani

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Maybe you first clocked it during the Super Bowl, when its “Shop Like a Billionaire” jingle aired not once, not twice, but six different times. Maybe the site has been haunting you on Facebook and Instagram with targeted ads for products that are implausibly priced (a six-pack of bras, $16.58) and at times delightfully niche (a silicone nose model for piercing practice, $3.98). Or maybe you went to visit your parents one day only to find their home and garage teeming with cheap gadgets from China that they bought from a fun new app. Temu, which is both an app and a website, launched Stateside in September 2022. As of December 2023, it serves approximately 30 million daily users in the U.S. and was the most downloaded free app of last year. But while Temu may feel like a new kind of retail experience, it’s really just a turbocharged amalgamation of things we’ve seen before: the scale of Amazon and vastness of its merchandise selection, the aggressive advertising of Wish, the treasure hunt of a Ross or Marshalls, and the mobile gamification of commerce à la Candy Crush. And in a time of high inflation — as venture-subsidized start-ups shutter and even dollar-stores prices rise — Temu can feel like the last affordable shopping destination left.

What exactly is it?

At its core, Temu is just a giant marketplace where manufacturers and suppliers — around 80,000 of them, mostly based in China — can showcase their goods and sell them directly to consumers abroad. It’s up to the vendors to list their inventory on Temu’s site, but Temu will manage almost everything else: setting the prices, customer service, dealing with Customs, and handling payments and returns.

So it’s just Amazon but based in China?

Many of the manufacturers that sell stuff on Temu also supply goods to Amazon (and stores like Target and Walmart). Still, there are a few key differences between the two businesses. While Amazon owns some of its inventory — maybe purchased from a wholesaler or stocked as part of the company’s private label — Temu doesn’t own the products it sells. Amazon has been optimized for fast delivery, erecting a vast infrastructure of trucks and warehouses. Temu has optimized for lower prices. Its delivery system, which relies mostly on third-party shipping services like USPS, typically takes a week or longer, but the prices on average are noticeably lower than Amazon’s. John Deighton, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies consumer behavior, believes Temu’s “long-term strategy is to really hurt Amazon.”

How does it make money if everything’s so cheap?

By cutting out the intermediary steps between factories and consumers, Temu claims it can price products lower than most retailers. But experts hypothesize that Temu is most likely subsidizing at least part of the cost of its products in order to gain market share. John Deighton, a professor of consumer behavior at Harvard Business School, says he has seen an analysis of Temu’s financials that suggests no matter how much stuff it’s selling, it can’t be making up for what it’s losing. “It’s not just a loss; it’s a hopeless loss,” he says. “It’s on a scale that no amount of volume is going to redeem.” China Merchants Securities, a brokerage firm, estimated in 2022 that Temu is losing between $588 million and $954 million a year. Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, calls the strategy a “shock-imposed buy”: When the price of something is so unbelievably low that customers have no choice but to hit “purchase.”

Who is paying for this, then?

One reason Temu can afford to lose so much money is that its parent company, PDD Holdings, is a Chinese e-commerce giant whose revenue for the fiscal year 2023 was $34.88 billion. PDD Holdings is notorious for its brutal “996” work culture, in which employees work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days per week. According to the newspaper Nikkei Asia, PDD employees use pseudonyms at work and are discouraged from socializing with one another. The company has a strict clock-in, clock-out system, in which being even one minute late results in the deduction of one hour’s pay. PDD’s work culture was particularly scrutinized after the deaths of two of its employees. The first, in 2020, involved a 22-year-old who suddenly died while walking home at 1:30 a.m. after working late; the other, in January 2021, occurred when an engineer on leave jumped off the 27th story of an apartment building. An anonymous venture capitalist in San Francisco says of PDD, “It’s just one of the most insanely hardworking, brutal cultures, even in China. The intensity is unparalleled.” (When asked about the PDD work culture, a Temu spokesperson said, “We take pride in our energetic and creative team.”)

Is the website supposed to give me a headache?

Temu’s app and website feel like a cross between a carnival and a Pennysaver catalogue on steroids: There are lightning deals and limited-time offers, countdown timers and random-prize draws, all of them dangling the possibility of a rebate or discount (many of which expire after 60 minutes). You can play games like Fishland, in which feeding a certain number of fish wins you a free product, and Lucky Flip, in which you can earn rewards by matching symbols on cards. Occasionally, a picker wheel will pop up, tempting you to spin to win a discount. But as novel as this may seem to Americans, this chaotic, arcadelike shopping experience is not new to Chinese e-commerce — AliExpress has been using similar tactics for nearly a decade.

Is any of this stuff good?

Temu is dizzying: more than 3 million product listings, divided into 33 categories further split into dozens of subcategories. To figure out what people are buying, I reached out to both avid consumers and professional product reviewers. Many use the site as a place to buy unglamorous sundries they’d normally get from Amazon. One 20-something Goldman Sachs analyst uses it to purchase items for her pet: enrichment toys, treat dispensers, and water bottles. A venture capitalist says he ordered blackout curtains on the app when he realized they were far cheaper on Temu ($10) than on Amazon ($20).

Every Question You Have About Temu, Answered (1)

Dorothy, a Chicago-based lawyer, first heard about Temu at her favorite dollar store when buying craft supplies. “I overheard some of the crafty mavens in the aisle talking. ‘Girl, you got to go on Temu,’” she says. She has spent $5,643.27 on Temu since January 2023 and found success in a few categories. “The jewelry is fantastic,” Dorothy says. She recently bought her daughter a customized 925-sterling-silver necklace (“A Sex and the City necklace like Carrie had”), which was received enthusiastically. She has also been pleased with purchases that are functional but can be disposed of quickly, like press-on nails and silk flowers for crafts, and she’ll also buy things she wants to try once but doesn’t wish to spend a lot of money on: silver lamé leggings and 89-cent clip-on bangs she keeps around so that when she suddenly has the impulse to get bangs, she can “put those on and stop myself.”

What’s with all the knockoffs?

Every Question You Have About Temu, Answered (2)

The site abounds with close and not-so-close replicas of beloved products: There are copies of the viral Bogg bag, Yeezy Runners, Crocs, the 40-ounce Stanley tumbler, and even the Apple Watch. The site is also saturated with facsimiles of popular makeup and skin-care products, like a Tarte Shape Tape look-alike ($1.79) and something that resembles the Dior Lip Glow Oil ($2.69). The quality of the knockoffs can be a toss-up, though; Dorothy, for instance, is partial to a pair of $20 fake Ferragamo shoes that she calls her “fake-a-gamos,” but had to give away an Izod-polo-shirt look-alike because the logo looked like a “drunk alligator.”

Do I really dare use Temu lip oil?

“Once you start testing the formula, the texture, I would say it’s very different from the original product,” says TikTok influencer Demi Ngai, who has tried many of Temu’s beauty offerings. The most noticeable difference, she says, is the “overwhelming fragrance” of the Temu version. Dorothy’s review is a bit more blunt; Temu’s makeup, in her experience, is “garbage.”

Are any of the knockoffs actually good dupes?

Austin Evans, who reviews gadgets on his YouTube channel, says if he could recommend one tech accessory on Temu, it would be the Razer-mouse dupe, which often costs less than $20 (the price of a real one ranges from $30 to $180). Evans has also found that Temu’s cheap Bluetooth earbuds, the ones that look like AirPods, are “surprisingly good.”

Are the electronics safe?

Every Question You Have About Temu, Answered (3)

Didn’t I just see some of this stuff on Etsy?

Many artists and small-business owners have found copies of their work being sold on the website. Jessi Roberts, founder of a Texas-based accessory and apparel business called Cheekys, hadn’t heard of Temu until her customers began sending her screenshots of the site, which listed counterfeit versions of her earrings — and even used her own product images. “They will pull every picture off our website,” she says. Even now, her customers will tag her in a Temu ad or comment on Temu’s Instagram post when they spot counterfeits, but their loyalty can backfire: “The problem is that the second they start talking about Temu or commenting on their post, Temu’s ads start coming to them hot and heavy.” Roberts and her lawyer, Andrea Sager, say they have submitted takedown requests for copied products dozens of times, most of which have been futile —only after Time published an article about her stolen designs did Roberts receive a message from a Temu employee letting her know that they had removed the counterfeit products. Sager, who represents small-business owners, says she is constantly on Temu’s website looking for her clients’ work. (“Temu has strict policies against sellers who infringe on intellectual-property rights,” a spokesperson said. “When we receive reports of infringement, we promptly investigate each case and take appropriate action.”)

What are the weirdest things Temu sells?

Many of the oddest wares I came across on Temu call to mind the Japanese term chindōgu, which literally translates to “unusual tool” and denotes a bewildering but impressive Japanese invention that solves an ultraspecific problem: butter in the form of a glue stick, a fan attachment for chopsticks to cool down noodles, a toilet-roll dispenser affixed to a headband for chronic nose-blowers. One day, on a whim, I typed the word silicone into the search bar, which yielded a seven-piece set of soft silicone body parts for piercing practice, silicone foot models, a silicone back-scrubber belt, sex dolls that looked like AI avatars in three dimensions, and an “artificial booty shaper” that was basically a pair of flesh-colored underwear made of silicone with extra padding on the butt (and a butt crack to make it look more realistic).

What happens when you buy something?

To find out, I placed two orders. My total haul, which was 29 items chosen through a mix of recommendations, curiosity, and personal need, came out to $120.08. From the moment I hit “purchase” to when the packages arrived from China, I received 12 emails updating me on their every move. Each order came in a large white plastic mailing bag. Inside, many of the items appeared to be in their original factory packaging, labeled with the manufacturer’s name, address, and batch number.

Is there anything a buyer should be wary of?

We asked people to share their biggest Temu flops. If there’s anything to stay away from, Evans says, it’s video games, especially those for the Nintendo Switch. Even if they look very realistic, there’s a chance that they could be counterfeit. Installing them, he has heard, can get your Switch console banned. Dorothy’s Temu fail was a nearly five-foot-tall stuffed giraffe she bought for her grandson — it was also one of the more expensive items she has ever bought on the site, at $63. When the giraffe arrived, it wouldn’t stand on its legs, so her grandson had no choice but to play with what resembled a wounded animal.

My own experience confirmed that no matter what category you’re looking at, Temu can be hit or miss. The first order, which took seven days to arrive, contained wireless earbuds, a compact desktop vacuum cleaner, ear-protection covers, silicone socks, white foam slippers, a neck fan, a gooseneck phone holder, and a Montessori tooth model, which I had hoped would convince my toddler to brush his own teeth. The silicone socks were covered in a fine white powder; the neck fan’s cooling power was weak. While Evans had spoken highly of the electronics, the wireless earbuds simply refused to connect to my phone, and I could not figure out how to use the vacuum cleaner.

But when my second package came, ten days after the order date, I was pleasantly surprised. There were still some duds, like a heated eyelash curler that performed worse than the non-heated ones that I already own and a pair of silicone stick-on nipple covers that were not as sticky as I would have liked. Still, I was satisfied with the quality of the wet bag for diapers and clothes, the tabi socks, a pair of grippy socks that can be used for Pilates, and this precision pin-tail comb with a stainless-steel tip, which has a substantial weight to it and is very similar to this Y.S. Park one I have that costs ten times more.

Okay, but was anything you ordered actually good?

YouTuber Matt Shaver told me he’d had good luck with Temu’s jeans, which inspired me to try some for myself. After some browsing, I landed on this $19.11 pair — both because I liked their baggy shape and contrast stitching, and also because they had the highest percentage of cotton (95 percent cotton, 5 percent polyester). These jeans ended up being my most shocking discovery: comfortable, snug around the waist but baggy through the legs (which is how I like jeans to fit), and remarkably reminiscent of the much beloved Rudy Jude utility jeans and these double-knee painter pants by Stan Ray. Upon closer examination, some of the seamwork reveals the lower quality, but the jeans are no worse than what you would buy at any other apparel chain that makes its clothes in China (like Gap or Zara). My other Temu win was this two-in-one box cutter and thermal-paper corrector, which works a bit like magic: You swipe it across a label taped to a box that you want to reuse and the label’s text disappears.

Is there any way to decrease my odds of buying pure junk?

On a Reddit thread, one user shared a hack for finding quality products on Temu: Simply locate an item with excellent reviews on Amazon, upload the image to Google Lens, and “you will almost always find links to the exact same item on Temu for a much lower price.” If you’re looking at a Temu listing that doesn’t have quite enough information, you can do the same trick in reverse to read the product’s Amazon reviews.

How much Temu are Americans buying?

Every Question You Have About Temu, Answered (4)

In December, research firm Cargo Facts Consulting aggregated data showing that Temu shipped around 4,000 tons of goods per day. In the same way that Temu has bypassed typical wholesalers to work directly with factories, the company has also done something unprecedented in the air-cargo industry: working directly with commercial airlines themselves rather than exclusively through freight forwarders, which it’s able to do because of its massive volume of goods. Sunandan Ray, CEO of freight-forwarding company Unique Logistics International, claims that, to expand shipping capacity, Temu has even gone directly to charter-flight operators — which would mean the company is effectively hiring an entire plane for its own purposes. “The airlines themselves cannot cope with this traffic, so Temu needs other options,” says Ray. Temu is shipping such an enormous volume of goods to the U.S. that it has helped spur the recovery of the air-cargo industry, which had flagged during the pandemic. Niall van de Wouw, the Chief Airfreight Officer at freight analytics company Xeneta, compares Temu’s effect on the air-cargo industry to the role PPE like N95 masks played at the start of the pandemic in 2020. “It’s nearly impossible to have a conversation about air freight in Asia-Pacific and not mention Temu or Shein,” he says.

How are USPS drivers feeling about Temu?

Sean Fogelson, a former USPS delivery person in Cincinnati who works as a comedian, heard about Temu in June 2023 after orders started taking over his delivery load: “It just kept coming, and I’m like, What the hell is this sh*t, man?” He coined the term Temu tired, which was the basis of a TikTok video that went viral.

Fogelson was especially frustrated with Temu’s packaging — the way the company would put an entire order’s worth of items in a single bag (as opposed to a sturdier box). On the USPS sub-Reddit, others agreed, harping especially on the “shrink wrap”–like packaging that often turns the parcel into an unwieldy, irregularly shaped object. Schlepping several of these packages around can be particularly burdensome for carriers because they can’t always fit them into their satchels.

Is the company spending a fortune on import taxes?

No. In fact, it’s spending very little by taking advantage of a consumer loophole known as the de minimis value, which applies to shipments so small they don’t warrant taxes or duty. In the U.S., shipments that contain merchandise with a value under $800 do not need to pay duties. The average Temu order size is $25, according to a Wired report, so the majority fall under the exemption.

According to a May 2023 report delivered to Congress, Temu and Shein were likely responsible for more than 30 percent of incoming international shipments falling under the de minimis provision. In 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection cleared 685 million de minimis shipments. The report points out that Temu’s business model relies on this provision, which allows the company to circumvent compliance with forced-labor restrictions, customs duties, and facing “the same level of customs scrutiny that other retailers might face” since de minimis shipments also bypass inspection. In 2022, Gap, for instance, paid $700 million in import taxes, H&M paid $205 million, and Shein and Temu paid zero.

What about the labor conditions?

Because Temu does not own its products or operate its own factories, the origins of its goods can be difficult to trace. Still, both the U.S. government and experts have claimed that Temu is laissez-faire when it comes to keeping its supply chains free of slave labor. According to a report published by Congress in June 2023, Temu admitted that it does not prohibit third parties from selling products originating from Xinjiang, where Uyghurs have been abused. And the tech firm Ultra analyzed shipping data and concluded that many of the products listed on Temu’s sister platform, Pinduoduo, some of which were also listed on Temu, came from companies in Xinjiang. (“We strictly prohibit the use of involuntary labor and expect our business partners and sellers to ensure they are compliant with platform rules and the law,” a spokesperson said.)

Are Shein and Temu friends?

Even though their offerings are different, there is certainly some overlap in what the two companies sell — enough to fuel an acrimonious rivalry. In December 2022, just three months after Temu launched Stateside, Shein filed a lawsuit against Temu, accusing the company of paying social-media influencers to make “false and deceptive statements” about Shein and creating fake Shein accounts on Twitter that “[tricked] consumers into believing Temu [was] associated with the brand.” (Temu said it “strongly and categorically rejects all allegations.”) In July 2023, Temu hit back with its own suit against Shein, accusing the fast-fashion retailer of “[forcing] manufacturers to sign loyalty oaths certifying that they will not do business with Temu.” (Both lawsuits were dropped in October.)

On December 13, 2023, Temu filed another lawsuit against Shein. The 100-page complaint accused Shein of using “mafia-style intimidation” against suppliers who “[dared] to work with Temu,” which included “physical detention … personal threats, and illegal seizures of merchants’ personal devices” to access Temu’s confidential information and trade secrets. (One supplier’s representatives, according to the lawsuit, were held in a small room at Shein’s office for up to ten hours.) In pages of corporate trash talk, Temu alleges that Shein did this to persuade suppliers to sign exclusivity contracts and that Shein had illegally seized IP rights. The lawsuit also purports that Shein bombarded Temu with fake copyright takedown requests — 33,000 over ten months — and blatantly copied Temu’s games and “arcade-style” look by poaching its marketing employees. Read the entirety of the lawsuit here.

Is it tee-moo or teh-moo?

In its 2023 Super Bowl ad, the company referred to itself as tee-moo (allegedly derived from its motto, “Team up, price down”). Then, in the 2024 Super Bowl commercial, the pronunciation switched to teh-moo. Michael Gross, managing director of the agency hired to produce the ad’s music, said Temu gave them no explanation; the company’s only instruction was to make sure the new pronunciation was heard several times throughout the jingle.

“Team up, price down” —what does that mean?

Group buying, known as tuán gòu in Chinese, involves offering discounted rates for bulk purchases, a concept Temu employs to incentivize consumers’ buying behavior. This is a common practice in China, where community leaders such as grocery-store owners and housewives will gather groups of buyers (often through messenger services like WeChat) who want to go in on a wholesale order together — whether that be groceries or household items like toilet paper. Collective purchases like this give the group access to lower prices. More recently, Chinese e-commerce websites like Temu have applied group-buying tactics both by selling products in bulk at low prices and by offering referral programs through which customers can unlock discounts by sharing links with friends and family.

If I start shopping on Temu, will I be able to stop?

As far as we know, no formal studies have been conducted that showed a link between Temu and a shopping addiction. Still,there are several Facebook groups for “Temu addicts,” and Reddit posts abound with individuals complaining that their mother-in-law or husband — or even themselves — is addicted to Temu. Ngai, the TikTok influencer, describes the experience as being “led down this rabbit hole. It’s Amazon but on steroids. It was just this endless scroll that you could go on for days.” Part of the hook, several shoppers told us, is the sense of embarking on a treasure hunt. “Temu very much feels like the 2024 version of the dollar store when I want to walk around and buy a couple of random things. It’s fun. It’s a little problematic but, largely speaking, appears to be pretty solid,” says Evans, the gadget reviewer. Dorothy, the super-user, is a dedicated shopper of Ross and Primark but says that after a long day at work, there’s something particularly soothing about scrolling through Temu “to see if there’s anything special today.”

I heard Temu is especially popular among boomer women. Why?

The site’s most loyal shoppers are those in the 59-and-older demographic — which has provoked everything from disdain and alarm to pure exasperation from younger generations (a recent Business Insider headline: “Is Your Mom a ‘Temu Victim’?”). Several experts have attributed this to the site’s design, which looks more accessible than Amazon’s. Another has suggested that older shoppers, if they’re less tech-savvy, may be more vulnerable to the psychological manipulations of Temu’s casinolike design. Nostalgia may also be at play: One older shopper told Business Insider that Temu’s offerings remind him of what he used to find on late-night infomercials. Another shopper said the site echoes the now-extinct experience of coming across strange gadgets and knickknacks in the checkout line of Bed Bath & Beyond.

What is this Boston address that shows up when I Google Temu?

Most of the business, including the entire engineering team, is based in China. But Temu is also registered as WhaleCo, Inc., in Massachusetts and headquartered in Boston at 31 Saint James Avenue, Suite 355. Little is known about the operations of the American office. “Temu chose Boston for its office in the U.S. because it offers access to skilled talent and convenient global transportation links,” a company spokesperson said. Deighton’s hypothesis is that the office serves as “an advertising buying station,” i.e., a small team of people whose sole function is to bid on Google AdWords and the like — though this is only a guess. “Somebody has to be placing those orders, and someone’s negotiating quantity discounts with Yahoo and so on,” he says.

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