Millions Of Oz Customers Flocking To Temu And Shein

Major e-commerce companies Temu and Shein have managed to attract millions of Australian customers to their platforms which offer products at rock-bottom prices.

New data from Roy Morgan indicates that 3.8 million Australians aged 14+ are buying at least once from Temu over 12 months, while 2 million are buying at least once from Shein.

Among customers who have shopped on Shein and Temu in the last 12-month period, the majority are repeat customers – 76 per cent of Shein shoppers and 80 per cent of Temu shoppers bought at least twice over that period from each platform.

Those figures demonstrate that both of them are capable of attracting repeat customers and are steadily building platform loyalty among customers in Australia.

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source data (April 2024 to June 2024). Base: n=16,621 Australians aged 14+

Furthermore, many of them are high-frequency buyers too. Forty-two per cent of Shein shoppers are buying four or more times over 12 months, while 48 per cent of Temu shoppers are buying four or more times over 12 months.

Roy Morgan says that it has been tracking the number of monthly shoppers on Temu and Shein since the last quarter of 2023.

Sine then, the number of shoppers has continued to grow at a staggering rate with the number of people shopping each month on Temu having grown by 32 per cent, from 1.26 million in the Oct-Dec 2023 quarter to 1.66 million in the April-June 2024 quarter.

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source data (October 2023 to June 2024) – last three quarters. Base: Average interviews per quarter, n=16,134 Australians aged 14+

Meanwhile, Shein’s shopper base has grown 34 per cent, leaping from 830,000 monthly shoppers to 1.11 million over the same period.

It estimates that Temu and Shein together had close to $3 billion in annual sales in the 12 months to June 2024, which includes $1.7 billion for Temu and $1.1 billion for Shein.

As for the demographic of its shoppers, Roy Morgan found that Shein shoppers are still majority female (78 per cent), in line with the platform’s biggest category which is women’s clothing.

Temu has a greater proportion of male shoppers, buying from the varied range of categories available including clothing, accessories and electrical goods.

Almost half of Shein shoppers are aged under 35, while Temu’s shopper base is older with more than 70 per cent aged 35+.

“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.

“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.”

The growth can be attributed to more Australians continuing to trade down in the first half of 2024 in response to the cost-of-living crisis. On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia stubbornly maintained the cash rate at its 12-year-high of 4.35 per cent.

“These numbers confirm that the ‘trading down’ phenomenon is real. Every month more and more Australians – both young and old – are trading down to these platforms to stretch their dollars further, redirecting billions of dollars away from Australian retailers,” added Demasi.