Beijing: Chinese shopping apps are competing with each other to win over more American customers. This holiday season, Americans were inundated with discount offers for their dollars as Chinese tech companies ByteDance, Pinduoduo and Shein vie for the attention of American consumers.

To compete with Shein, a fast-fashion platform also established in China, Shanghai-based Pinduoduo, which rose to fame at home by offering really great deals, launched international budget shopping platform Teemu in September .

Despite Shein's immense popularity in the US, Teemu was briefly overtaken as the most downloaded shopping app in early November.

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Meanwhile, Chinese social media giant ByteDance has been experimenting since November with a shopping feature that lets users turn their profiles into virtual shelves to sell stuff in an effort to further monetize the massive influence of its short video app TikTok. enables.

These Chinese tech companies see their relationships with Chinese factories as an advantage in competing for the wallets of American consumers in the US, which is already known for its fierce retail competition.

As Shein has shown, Chinese businesses are bucking the status quo and competing with Amazon in their own backyards, according to Mark Tanner, managing director of China Skinny, a Shanghai-based market research company.

They have learned the trade in the much more developed Chinese market, which is ahead of the US in making e-commerce less transactional and more entertainment-oriented, but their main advantage is low-cost structures.

Andy Zhang, a Chinese seller on Amazon.com who sells shower heads, is less optimistic about new sellers entering the U.S. market. Due to low traffic and the continued dominance of Amazon and Walmart in the market, he announced that he would not be opening a store on Teemu at this time.

He said that some of us would choose the smaller platforms when the larger platforms were full of traders so that we could get to the front of the line. "Despite this, Pinduoduo and other Chinese businesses are not recognized enough in the US. They receive less traffic than Amazon.

Teemu's launch and development in the US coincided with the start of the holiday shopping season, which typically begins on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which this year falls on November 25 and 28.

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According to Adobe Analytics, spending in this year's shopping festival reached US$9.12 billion and US$11.3 billion, an increase of 2.3% and 5.8%, respectively, compared to last year.

For some promoted items, such as accessories such as earrings that cost less than $1 USD and earbuds that only cost a few dollars, Temu and Shein offered up to 90% off.

The discount was matched with benefits such as free shipping and additional savings for special categories or orders over a certain threshold. Sheen offered 10%. Closed for orders of US$39 and over.

Amazon, which claims to have experienced its "biggest ever" holiday shopping weekend this year, has come under regulatory scrutiny in the US, with plans to lay off thousands of workers. Chinese app competition has now become a new threat to it.

According to DataReportal, as of April, TikTok had over 136 million users in the US. As consumers look for better deals, inflation has also forced them to tighten their wallets, which is ideal for Pinduoduo.

The congested domestic market is forcing Chinese e-commerce companies to seek expansion opportunities overseas. According to the Ministry of Commerce, the value of Chinese imports and exports will reach 39.1 trillion yuan (US$5.5 trillion) in 2021.

However, only 3.1% of imports and 6.6% of exports were from cross-border e-commerce, indicating more room for expansion in this sector.

Teemu is luring suppliers to join its platform by promising free listings and no commission fees, as The Post previously reported.
Analysts and industry insiders believe that dominating the US market will be difficult.

According to China Skinny's Tanner, Chinese e-commerce players will face difficulties due to "lack of familiarity with the market and the nuances between China and the US – for which there are many, such as familiarity and habit, logistics and infrastructure". , and data concerns with Chinese companies," which are numerous.

George Gu, founder of international e-commerce business Newme, claimed that the high cost of "shipping small orders by air" is threatening the financial viability of Chinese e-commerce players.

Temu is "doing this with very high logistics costs and advertising investments," the speaker warned. "These logistic costs won't change much regardless of whether your business is big or small."

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Gu, who started his business in November 2020 in an effort to capitalise on a new wave of e-commerce on the platform, said, "For now, we will stick to TikTok." However, we will eventually make our brand's products available through all channels.