Two years after its launch, Temu overtook eBay to become the second most visited e-commerce site in the world.
Temu, without any reservations, is the only e-commerce company in the list of top 20 most visited sites that has launched in the last decade. South Korea’s Coupang aside, it is the only leading e-commerce site launched in the last two decades. The global e-commerce leaders are well-established and the status quo at the top has not changed significantly in recent years. On the verge of entering the Top 20 is Temu’s oft-compared competitor Shein.
No one else had the ambition and capital to try to build a retail network from zero to tens of billions of dollars in two years on an accelerated basis. Temu gets little organic traffic; it buys hundreds of millions of visits through advertising. Everyone else can buy them, too. So Temu’s meteoric rise is remarkable because it hasn’t happened before at any retailer. (Perhaps it will turn out to be for good reason.)
According to SimilarWeb, Temu.com has about 700 million monthly visitors. Only a quarter of those are visits in the U.S. – Temu operates in 79 countries. By comparison, Amazon.com attracts 2.7 billion visits, almost all of which come from U.S. users. Although Temu originally only sold products in the U.S., it is now a global retailer, with the U.S. making up only a small portion.
It is believed that Temu’s sales are primarily made through the app rather than the website. Thus, its web traffic is only part of the overall story. Many other e-commerce giants, especially in China, get little web traffic, so Temu’s status as the second most visited e-commerce site does not make it the second largest online retailer. Temu has set a goal of $60 billion in sales this year, an order of magnitude less than Amazon. However, Chinese media report that Temu is aiming to become second to Amazon in the US and first in Europe.
Temu became the most downloaded shopping app in the US just weeks after launching in September 2022. Since then, it has held the top spot every day for nearly two years. It now holds the top spot in most of the nearly 80 countries it operates in.
Temu reached 700 million visits per month through a strategy that had an expiration date because it was clearly unprofitable and subject to regulatory risks. When Temu launched, it was an ultra-cheap direct-to-consumer marketplace from China. But today, 20% of Temu’s U.S. sales already come from local warehouses in the U.S., The Information reports, at prices only slightly lower than Amazon. Built on a de minimis threshold, it may no longer be needed once countries reconsider.
Web traffic and app downloads are not revenue or profits. But they do indicate ambition. Having gotten big, Temu’s company is trying to figure out what it is.
