Amazon’s top brass is more concerned about China-based competitors Temu and Shein than the Seattle-based web giant’s decades-long battle with Walmart and Target, according to a report.
Fast-growing e-tailers Temu and Shein, which offer cheap goods shipped directly from China, are making significant inroads in the US in less than two years — and there are signs it is already taking a bite out of Amazon’s business, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Temu grew to 51.4 million users in January from its launch here in September 2022, while Shein’s users increased to 26 million over the same period from 20.9 million, according to the report, which cites data from Sensor Tower.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s users fell to 67 million from 69.6 million over the same period, according to the report.
Amazon disputed the decline but did not provide data to counter the report.
In response, Amazon is developing promotions to tout its reliability and fast delivery, according to the report, countering the six to 20 days it takes for a package to arrive here from China.
“Although Amazon pays attention to competitors, we obsess over customers,” the Seattle-based company said in a statement.
“Amazon delivers vastly more selection much faster than other retailers, and we delivered to Prime members at the fastest speeds ever globally in 2023 with more than 4 billion items arriving the same or next day in the U.S. alone.”
Temu’s parent company PDD Holdings has become a top advertiser on Meta and spent nearly $2 billion on Google ads, according to a previous Journal report. The company also spent $21 million on three 30-second ads during the Super Bowl, with its “Shop Like a Billionaire” campaign.
But the upstart e-tailers are facing significant challenges, including thousands of customer complaints. Temu is defending itself against two lawsuits alleging that its app “installs dangerous malware and spyware” on users’ phones and that it collects customers’ personal information including biometric data, according to court documents.
Temu has denied the allegations.
It has also generated an eye-popping 1,900 customer complaints with the Better Business Bureau from customers who claimed their packages never arrived or complained about the quality of the goods, among other issues.
A spokeswoman for the International Association of BBB told The Post that Temu has been working with the organization to address these complaints since the summer.
Shein and Temu together send almost 600,000 packages to the United States every day, according to a June 2023 report by the US Congress.
Lawmakers are investigating allegations that the sites use forced labor to fulfill their orders.
