The race to bring China-made goods to Western consumers via online stores is heating up. Pinduoduo, the Chinese e-commerce giant known for offering hard-to-believe deals, has quickly gained momentum for its first international endeavor in the U.S.
The company’s overseas shopping app, called Temu, briefly claimed the top spot of Android shopping apps in the U.S. in mid-September before dipping to No. 15 this week, according to app analytics platform Data.ai. The rankings indicate new downloads, so it’s hard to gauge the app’s user retention and activeness.
At a glance, Temu doesn’t look much different from other e-commerce platforms exporting cheap goods from China, like Amazon, Alibaba’s AliExpress, or Wish. Its landing page features a dazzling collection of competitively priced products, from a $2.77 blouse to a $1.39 soap holder.
Pinduoduo is relatively late to the cross-border e-commerce scene. In nearly every major market outside China, one c …
