Chinese eCommerce company Pinduodo has launched an online shopping site in the U.S. in its first major overseas expansion.
According to published reports Friday (Sept. 2), the site – known as Temu – sells products in various categories, including clothing, pet supplies and home and garden among them.
Read more: Chinese Online Marketplace Pinduoduo Expands to US
Pinduoduo is based in Shanghai and was founded in 2015 by former CEO and Chairman Colin Huang; founding member Lei Chen took over as chief executive in 2020 and chairman in 2021, according to the company’s website.
Pinduoduo was not immediately available for comment Friday.
As PYMNTS noted last month, Pinduoduo has become the biggest online marketplace for agricultural products in China and has attracted sellers from all categories, particularly low-priced daily necessities and home products.
Learn more: Asian eCommerce Firm Lazada Heads to Europe to Compete With Amazon
The news comes one day after Lazada Group, the Chinese eCommerce platform owned by tech giant Alibaba, said it was expanding to Europe to compete with Amazon and Zalando.
“Europe is a very big market obviously and for most of the European brands, their largest retail partner is Alibaba Group because of their sales in China and in other markets,” CEO James Dong said. “We go where the brands want us to go.”
Chinese eCommerce companies have been trying to expand outward as the economy in their home country continues to deal with the pandemic.
Related: Local Payments, Platforms Key to Keeping Asian Consumers Spending on Luxury Brands
As PYMNTS noted recently, luxury brands outside China that depend on Chinese tourism dollars are also hurting.
The impact of the decline in tourists from China has been significant because spending by those tourists has made up one-third of luxury brands’ global sales.
It’s not unlikely that Chinese tourism spending will reach pre-pandemic levels until 2025, meaning spending on luxury brands is confined to transactions in China. This means that those brands will need to focus on the preferences in those markets.
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