To The Moon

Image Source : China Visual

BEIJING, March 10 (TMTPOST) —— Chinese e-commerce heavyweight PDD Holdings Inc. is gearing up its global push into the overseas market by setting up its branches in Australia and New Zealand next Monday, following its business expansion into the United States and Canada.

A person close to PDD, formally known as Pinduoduo, said its cross-border e-commerce platform Temu is likely to enter Europe in the second half of 2023.

In recent years, the e-commerce market has witnessed rapid growth in Australia and New Zealand. As the 13th largest e-commerce commerce market in the world, Australia has projected revenues of $43.3 billion in 2023 and a compound annual growth rate of over 10% in the next 5 years, according to the consultancy company ecommerceDB. New Zealand, the 48th largest e-commerce market in the world, is expected to have revenues of $6.3 billion in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of over 12 percent over the next five years.

So far, Amazon, eBay, Shopee, Rakuten, and AliExpress have been the major e-commerce platforms in Oceania. SHEIN, a cross-border clothing retailer, also has a branch in Australia.

Temu will bring PDD's ultra-low-price marketing strategy and social networking to Australia and New Zealand, which is starting to work in the United States.

The U.S. branch of Temu was launched on September 1, 2022, offering $2 Bluetooth headphones, $4 sneakers, and more daily necessities under $1. During the registration period, there is no threshold for free shipping, and existing users will be rewarded with cash if they invite new users to sign up.

Temu entered Canada in February 2023, and the reward for inviting new users by asking them to help get a bargain price for orders were physical commodities instead of cash. If a specified number of new users are invited by old users to register, old users can buy certain products for free. The value of the products old users want to get are will determine how many new users they need to invite.

Temu ran a series of ads during the Super Bowl on Feb. 14, highlighting the platform's low prices and repeating the slogan "Shop Like a millionaire" in its commercial.

Since its launch, Temu has shot up the app store rankings in the United States. According to a Temu investment manager, as of February 23, 2023, the Temu App has been downloaded more than 40 million times and has been on the top of the App Store and Google Play shopping charts for 69 days and 114 days, respectively.

Temu adopts the operation model under which sellers are suppliers and the platform is the operator. That is to say, the seller only provides one price quotation to the platform, and the goods are prepared in the domestic warehouse in advance. The goods are transported out of the country by air by the platform and delivered in bulk. The shipping period is 8-12 days. The overseas consumer will pay the seller the next day after delivery.

Since 2023, Temu has further strengthened investment promotion and held several investment promotion seminars in Yiwu, Guangzhou and other cities. Temu prefers factories with experience in cross-border e-commerce as its suppliers that can provide mainstream, easy-to-promote blockbuster products.