When Pinduoduo, the Chinese language low cost procuring app, debuted practically a decade in the past, the tech giants Alibaba and JD.com dominated China’s e-commerce enterprise.
Pinduoduo felt extra like a gimmick than a future rival. It was a mixture of a sport arcade, a shopping center and a social community. Its principal promoting level was decrease costs for buyers who recruited different consumers to make group purchases. Prospects may cross the time by enjoying video video games or earn cash by logging in day by day to browse the app.
Now, nobody is taking the corporate evenly.
Pinduoduo is the sister firm of Temu, the discount procuring app that has amassed tens of tens of millions of customers outdoors China, together with in the US, the place it’s spending billions of {dollars} on promotion. People who haven’t used Temu but have most likely seen its Tremendous Bowl adverts or Instagram posts.
Like TikTok, Temu is the overseas model of a extremely profitable Chinese language firm. As its recognition has grown in the US, its enterprise practices have additionally come underneath scrutiny. Members of Congress have questioned whether or not it’s offering a U.S. channel for merchandise which can be made in China utilizing compelled labor. It has encountered criticism for its labor practices and failure to implement mental property legal guidelines.
Inside China, Pinduoduo has additionally been gaining extra consideration. As a well-liked vacation spot for cheap groceries and home goods, it’s now closing in on JD, China’s second-biggest on-line retailer, by way of market share. And when it briefly overtook Alibaba because the nation’s most precious e-commerce agency final yr, Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, despatched an inner memo imploring his firm to “change and adapt” to maintain up.
Final month, PDD Holdings, the mother or father firm of Pinduoduo and Temu, reported that its annual income practically doubled in 2023, whereas Alibaba’s and JD’s income grew lower than 10 %. The corporate referred to as the end result a “pivotal chapter” in its historical past.
Pinduoduo has efficiently capitalized on one in every of China’s greatest financial challenges: sluggish shopper spending and falling costs for meals and different gadgets. Because the nation’s development has slowed, shoppers are embracing a way of life of so-called downgraded spending centered on Pinduoduo purchases.
It was totally different when Pinduoduo emerged in 2015. China’s speedy development over the previous a long time had instilled confidence that an increasing center class would proceed to flex its newfound wealth with lavish spending.
Round that point, Alibaba opened a sequence of supermarkets, promoting king crab legs, 30-year-old single malt Scotch whisky and different luxurious gadgets. JD began an e-commerce portal referred to as Toplife for premium manufacturers.
“The largest mistake on the time was this perception that China had develop into stuffed with middle-class shoppers, and that it will simply go up and up into the long run,” mentioned Robert Wu, editor of the Baiguan e-newsletter, which is concentrated on funding and enterprise in China.
In a 2018 interview, Pinduoduo’s founder, Colin Huang, who’s now China’s second-richest particular person, mentioned it was making an attempt to fulfill not simply China’s nouveau riche but additionally folks outdoors of “Beijing’s fifth ring,” a colloquialism for financially struggling individuals who dwell removed from China’s principal cities.
Pinduoduo, which didn’t reply to requests for remark, grew by phrase of mouth as a result of it supplied steep reductions. Sharing the bargains on-line was simple as a result of Pinduoduo was deeply intertwined with Tencent’s WeChat, a ubiquitous messaging service in China. Inside one yr, Pinduoduo had 100 million customers. After 5 years, it surpassed Alibaba with 788 million customers.
In a 2023 report, Goldman Sachs estimated that Pinduoduo accounted for 19 % of China’s e-commerce market by worth of merchandise bought, in contrast with 20 % for JD and 41 % for Alibaba.
Customers on Pinduoduo deal instantly with suppliers, farmers and producers to get low costs. The corporate retains its charges to customers and sellers low, and has averted heavy investments by outsourcing its logistics to different corporations. Mr. Huang as soon as mentioned he wished Pinduoduo to be like Fb for procuring, a vacation spot the place folks gathered with out essentially intending to buy.
After Pinduoduo’s success, social commerce is now the norm in China. Each e-commerce app options dwell procuring with influencers testing new merchandise and responding to consumer questions. A few of China’s greatest social networks are procuring locations. These embrace Xiaohongshu, the nation’s model of Instagram, and Douyin, the app owned by ByteDance, which runs TikTok outdoors China.
The primary attraction of Pinduoduo is its shockingly low costs. A 5.5-pound field of cherry tomatoes prices about $4.50, however the value per field is reduce in half if one other particular person joins to make a “crew buy.” A dozen rolls of five-ply rest room paper price 80 cents. Each are delivered free.
In its early days, Pinduoduo was overrun with knockoffs. It took aggressive steps to deal with the problem. Patrons who obtain counterfeit items are eligible for a refund of as much as 10 occasions their cash from the vendor. Sellers present a refund with no questions requested if a buyer is dissatisfied with a purchase order.
Rainbow Wang, an English instructor in Beijing, mentioned she was a faithful Pinduoduo shopper for day by day gadgets equivalent to fruit, greens, rice and yogurt. She will get even larger reductions by paying for a $1.50 month-to-month membership.
Ms. Wang mentioned she liked the low costs, free transport and beneficiant return coverage. There was once extra reductions, she mentioned, however she is going to proceed to buy there as a result of “its stuff remains to be low cost.”
For sellers, the large visitors to the app is the draw. Marcus Ding, common supervisor of a sporting items firm, mentioned he made extra money on Pinduoduo due to its decrease vendor charges. However a couple of fifth of the income he generates on Pinduoduo goes again into selling his merchandise on the platform. Pinduoduo makes most of its cash from promoting on the positioning. Final yr, about two-thirds of its income got here from sellers paying for product listings to seem prominently.
The promoting mannequin was almost definitely influenced by Google, the place Mr. Huang labored as an engineer from 2004 to 2007. Pinduoduo’s adverts are bought utilizing a Google-like public sale system to bid on key phrases.
There are different indicators of Google’s affect.
In a 2018 submitting for an preliminary public providing on the Nasdaq trade, Mr. Huang, who left Pinduoduo in 2021 however stays its greatest shareholder, began a letter by declaring that “Pinduoduo just isn’t a traditional firm.” Fourteen years earlier, Larry Web page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, famously opened their I.P.O. letter in the identical means.
Google declared that one in every of its ideas was “Don’t be evil.” Mr. Huang echoed that sentiment, too. “We might not at all times be understood, however we at all times do issues out of excellent will and do no evil,” he wrote.
Such statements of altruism run at odds with among the firm’s techniques, critics say. Final yr, the Google Play retailer suspended Pinduoduo’s app outdoors China after cybersecurity consultants discovered that it was laced with malware. And Pinduoduo is more likely to face extra scrutiny due to Temu’s success. It is likely one of the most downloaded apps in the US and increasing into dozens of different nations.
Temu doesn’t promote groceries, specializing in garments, magnificence merchandise and devices. Very similar to Pinduoduo’s clients in China, Temu’s buyers purchase merchandise instantly from producers and distributors. It’s most likely shedding cash on most orders due to its low costs.
With most of Temu’s merchandise originating in China, it prices an estimated $11 per order to ship merchandise to the US and $9 to $10 per order for shipments to Europe and Australia, in keeping with Robin Zhu, a Chinese language web analyst at Bernstein Analysis.
Final month, Chen Lei, PDD Holdings’ co-chief govt and chairman, advised analysts that Temu’s world growth was at an early stage with many uncertainties. However it’s working off a lesson from China: Customers at all times need extra financial savings.