Temu is an online marketplace that sells products direct from China. The website consists of many sellers that post their products on the site to sell to users predominantly in western countries. The main sticking point for Temu is that they aggregate the items from all the sellers and send you combined packaging to save costs on shipping. They essentially operate in a similiar way to how Amazon works with fulfilling for its third party vendors.

It is unknown at this point whether Temu has it’s own warehouse to store some product or they have to receive it all from all the third party vendors.

temu.com

From Wikipedia – It is a U.S.-based subsidiary of the Chinese company Pinduoduo, a social commerce platform in China. Temu was launched in September 2022 in the US under the temu.com domain.

Temu.com Categories

The site contain various products organized into 29 top level categories and many other second level categories. Currently Google has over 1.3 million pages indexed. This will sure increase as more sellers get on boarded to the platform and becomes a true rival to Ebay and Amazon.

The selling point for Temu is the cheaper price for products as they source directly for China, with lower overheads for shipping and service. Temu is essentially providing a website for merchants to sell and market products and for customers to pay at one site and get fulfilled from one central distributor.

This saves costs for sellers in that they don’t need to ship items directly to customers and they don’t need to collect payments and deal with customer service for each buyer. The customer gets a cheaper buy price, consolidated shipping and an easy to use platform.

Temu is on an aggressive marketing strategy to get users on to its platform. You may have seen ads on Slickdeals, Reddit, Youtube and Tiktok. They are offering generous discounts to first time purchasers.

My first order had a coupon of 30% off for orders over $19 capped at $25. There are also other coupons with slightly different values than the ones that I have. The best thing to do is install the app, browse the products and wait at least one day for offers to flow through on to the account.

Coupon Codes

Example coupon codes I have used on my previous orders:

easy422 – 30% off for orders over $19 capped at $25

campus – 10% off for orders over $29 capped at $3

earnings20 – $25 off for orders over 45.01

The 10% off coupon is standard on every order.

The other offers will vary depending on your cart as well as what orders you have made in the past. A tip is to have items in the cart but not selected. This will trigger Temu to send you offers to add more items to the cart to get a discount.

A common offer that Temu employs to get you to spend more is an offer to $25 off the next order if you spend over $80. The coupon will apply after the order is complete.

Pricing

Items on the Temu marketplace are generally cheaper than what you will find on Ebay and Amazon, it becomes even more cheaper with the coupon codes on offer.

For example this cube purchased on Temu for 3.99 is sold on Ebay for $9.99 and Amazon for $9.98

You can find many other bargains on Temu, best to shop around as you will find multiple sellers on Temu selling the same product at different prices. You also need to compare with Amazon and Ebay as not all listed prices on Temu is cheaper. The range is also not as extensive but will increase over time.

Shipping

Shipping is free and relatively fast for it coming from China. Expect goods to arrive within 10 to 20 days depending on the number of items purchased. Some items have an express shipping option for an extra cost. In these cases you may just want to get it from Amazon for quicker delivery. All the items come in a plastic shipping bag which means items can be damaged in shipping from getting crushed. Basically all the boxes were crushed on delivery, so you need to take that into account based on the product purchased. I would avoid delicate items and look at reviews to see if others have a bad experience with receiving damaged goods. There is also a minimum order amount for Temu to ship out goods. Don’t expect t be able to just purchase one small dollar item.

Customer Service

I have not had the need or wanted to complain about the damaged boxes. The items are relatively cheap so it wouldn’t be worth my time. I expect them to be like any other Chinese online marketing place. If there are any issues, expect multiple emails to get it resolved. That’s where Ebay and Amazon excel, they will stand by the buyer when there are issues to be resolved.

Other sites that sell similiar products to Temu include:

  • wish.com
  • dx.com
  • banggood.com
  • lightinthebox.com

Company Info

Temu Corporate Office
Suite 355, 31 St. James Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02116, USA

East Coast Warehouse: 703 Bartley Chester Rd, Flanders, NJ 07836
West Coast Warehouse: 1521 E Francis St, Suite B, Ontario, CA 91761

If you have had an experience with Temu.com, leave a review below and a rating on how the order went.

If you have a Temu referral code, please also add to the comments.

FAQs

Does Temu.com ship all items together?

For the most part Temu aggregates all purchased items into a single package so it can be shipped to you in at a more economical rate. The items you purchase from sellers will ship their items to the Temu warehouse in China, from there they are repackage into a single package and shipped it directly to you. Some items will be separated if they are high value or don’t fit into one of the Temu bags.

How does Temu make money?

Temu makes money by saving on postage costs. Instead of sending 10 packages at $1 each for postage, they combine it and ship it out for $5. The buyer gets a cheaper price from combined bulk shipping and the seller does not have to directly deal with customers. Temu operates similiar to a FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) model. Temu handles customer service, payment and logistics.