The most downloaded free application in France on Tuesday August 22 was China's Temu, an e-commerce platform offering French consumers the best and worst of Chinese-style e-commerce. Its slogan – "shop like a billionaire" – proclaims the idea with a hint of irony: prices are so low that customers can afford whatever they want.

For those familiar with Chinese e-commerce applications, Temu's interface is a familiar one. You'll find hundreds of unlikely products, clothes and gadgets at unbeatable prices. Travel pillboxes, claw-shaped telescopic backscratchers, beard-shaving aprons and even women's shoes from €0.35. The list is accompanied by promotional messages introducing a sense of urgency: "Limited quantities, clearance sale," reads the home page, which is dotted with countdowns to "flash sales" or free shipping.

An infinite catalog, rock-bottom prices, ongoing sales: Temu's model is not very different from that of its parent company, Pinduoduo, a Chinese online shopping platform launched in 2015, which targeted rural China with group buying to compete with established companies, namely the country's number one online retailer, Alibaba, and the number two JD.com.

However, Pinduoduo, now number three with sales of 37.64 billion yuan (€4.8 billion) in the first quarter of 2023, has succeeded, with Temu, in doing what its two rivals never managed to do: export its success. A few years ago, Alibaba was the only Chinese platform to claim a significant footprint abroad, but the success of its international site, AliExpress, remained modest.

Meanwhile, new national champions have led the way. TikTok, a short video platform founded by ByteDance, competes with Facebook and Instagram for the attention of young people around the world. Shein, a clothing e-commerce site only available outside China, has seen its sales explode thanks to the confinements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Founded in July 2022, and first launched in the US, Temu is following in Shein's footsteps: it sends products from China directly to consumers. Thanks to aggressive digital marketing, the app became the most downloaded in the US in winter 2022. The same approach was followed in Europe – and France in particular – where Temu opened in April 2023. "Temu's model has a clear objective: acquire users as quickly as possible, put suppliers in competition to offer the best at the lowest price, and then do the whole thing all over again," explained Ivy Yang, a Chinese communications consultant based in New York.

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