Link: How Shein and Temu Snuck Up on Amazon - by Louise Matsakis

The average American Shein shopper is female, in her early 30s, and earns roughly $65,000 a year, according to a report by UBS Securities. Temu’s fastest-growing demographic in March was consumers between the ages of 55 to 64, leading younger people to make fun of their older relatives for becoming “Temu victims.” Morgan Stanley analysts found that the majority of Temu’s customers are also women, and more than half make less than $50,000 annually. That mirrors the consumer profile PDD targeted with its first shopping app in China, Pinduoduo, which launched in 2015 and has more than 750 million monthly active users. In 2018, PDD’s founder Colin Huang said he wanted Pinduoduo to appeal not just to the urban rich, but also those outside of “Beijing’s fifth ring,” a term that refers to people with modest incomes who live away from major Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The same year, The New York Times published one of my favorite editorial photographs of all time: A portrait of a 45-year-old street food vendor from a suburban Chinese town surrounded by all the things he had impulse bought on Pinduoduo, including an inflatable raft, a pink keyboard, and a mini motorized toy car for his daughter to ride around in. The accompanying article perfectly foreshadowed the type of customers Temu would seek out in the US. #

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