E-commerce company Temu, owned by Chinese company PDD Holdings, has been flooding the Australian market with cheap goods.

Recent data from market research firm Roy Morgan indicated that as many as 3.8 million Australians aged 14+ made a purchase at least once from Temu over the previous 12 months.

And while Temu started selling in Australia only in March last year, it hasn’t stopped some customers calling out the poor quality of the company’s goods.

A few have also raised questions about the company’s ethics and the conditions of the workers who make these ultracheap products.

Others have complained about poor-quality packaging, which they said had left items damaged upon delivery.

In the 12 months to June this year, Temu is believed to have had sales of A$1.7 billion in Oz, highlighting just how rapidly it is gaining market share – most likely at the expense of smaller merchants who are being priced out.

While Australia is yet to react to the situation, Indonesian authorities have already asked Alphabet’s Google and Apple to block Temu from the app stores in their country so it cannot be downloaded, reported Reuters.

The pre-emptive move was intended to protect the country’s small and medium-sized businesses against Temu’s cheap products, said communications minister Budi Arie Setiadi.

Temu vs Shein

 

Alongside Temu, another e-commerce major Shein which was founded in China and follows a similar rock-bottom pricing mechanism, is also believed to have crossed more than a billion dollars in annual sales in Australia.

“It’s been extraordinary to witness the continued rise of these ultra-cheap platforms, especially over the last nine months where they have enjoyed the kind of growth that Australian retailers can only dream of in this climate,” said Laura Demasi, Roy Morgan’s Head of Retail Research and Social and Consumer Trends a few weeks ago when it released its research data.

“Few could have predicted this scenario just one year ago. I can’t think of another retailer that has seen a hike of 30 per cent in customers in such a short time, especially now – other than Amazon, who is already mounting a fight back against these platforms at the global level.”