Pinduoduo made shopping social in China. Temu is taking that model global. Group buying, gamification, prices so low they feel illegal. The formula works everywhere because saving money is universal.
People ask how we sell a dress for $3. The answer is: we skip every middleman. Factory to app. No warehouse, no brand markup, no retail rent. The $3 dress costs $1.50 to make. The margins are thin but they exist.
We spent $2 billion on advertising in our first year in the US. A Super Bowl ad. Ads on every social platform. Most companies would call that insane. We call it a customer acquisition strategy with a very specific payback period.
I grew up in a factory town in Zhejiang. My parents worked in manufacturing. I understand factories. I understand supply chains. Temu is not a tech company pretending to understand manufacturing. It's the other way around.
Amazon charges sellers 40% in fees. We charge almost nothing. Sellers keep more. Prices drop. Consumers win. This is not complicated. It's just a fee structure nobody else was willing to offer.