The rise of Pinduoduo and Temu: profits and secrets | FT Film

#pinduoduo #temu #china #ecommerce #ecommercebusiness #amazon #alibaba

00:00 - Pinduoduo is not a normal company
00:58 - What is Pinduoduo?
02:11 - What is Temu?
03:26 - Why are PDD Holdings' finances so opaque?
06:23 - Why is PDD's head office in Dublin, Ireland?
08:54 - PDD's unusual origins and odd corporate structure
12:19 - How does Pinduoduo actually operate?
14:09 - How is PDD funding Temu?
15:33 - Temu, the most important development in ecommerce for some time
17:24 - How does Temu's cross border model actually work?
21:23 - What risk factors does Temu face?
23:55 - Transparency matters to investors, but Chinese manufacturing remains dominant

[yuweiduan]

Me as a former PDD employee gotta say, PDD is really secretive even for its own employee

[whitemerlin]

I think the realproblem is the price in US is too high. Indonesia also have temu, but the price is not much different with another local online shopping applications. That's why temu isn't growing rapidly here. But US is crazy, once i tried to buy an LED for 4x4 RV in amazon, it cost almost 30 x from my local online aplications

[vjstylo]

I saw the entire story, it started with we know nothing about PDD and ends with we know nothing about PDD. Holy cow, the story was 30 minutes long !

[EmcEggs]

The real mystery has always been why we pay 10-20 times the manufacturing costs of most everything

[NanY]

As a customer, I don’t care how the company structured. If they don’t have a CFO, perfectly, now I know they are helping me to save money as my money doesn’t use to pay a corporate executive. 😅 I like Temu’s business model and it really helps customers not paying unnecessary money out of our pocket..

[zakmorgan]

I got a TEMU ad before this video. The irony.

[EdwinaTS]

I was a customer of Amazon UK and I frequently wrote constructive reviews. This attracted many manufacturers to approach me for suggestions. I think Pinduoduo must have utilised this kind of customer-manufacturer feed back and recommendations to other people.

[stormsake]

Amazon has been bothering me since 2 years for a package that I have returned but they lost it in the warehouse, they even sued me where they lost the case but obviously it was not enough them to stop asking me the fee for the lost product plus 2 times more fee for the time past. Temu on the other hand did not ask me to return some items I bought, besides not all their products are bad. Electronics are maybe skeptical, but jewellery, textiles like jackets, pants, blankets, house equipment are 8/10. It is certainly disrupting Amazon's monopoly in a good way.

[Strawberrycake]

I agree that PDD/Temu is sus, but clarification on the employees not knowing coworkers' real names: In China it's VERY common for Millennials and GenZ's to go by a name that's not their birth name for business or personal reasons. Like if you do trade with foreigners often, you will use "Yasmina Chen" instead of "Chen MengYao." Or if you come from the countryside where it's the cultural norm to name your child terrible names (some believe bad names ward off bad luck, some have rules like "name the child the first thing the mom sees when she births the baby, " etc.), you don't want your coworkers to call you PenJi (literally "Bucket Chicken", which is what happened to the popular Yunnan influencer DianXi XiaoGe) so you avoid giving your real name out.

[azioprism]

*People want something faster and even cheaper than TEMU, it seems the cycle never ends until everything is free and instant :3*

[sevenhenson]

temu is selling dirt cheap stuff. of course it wont affect most companies, except for amazon. cos a item on temu could be listed on amazon with 10 times its price. resellers cant compete with direct from factory sales

[bejxtyn]

Great film as always FT, very grateful for the quality material put out for free.

[anjelaselezneva]

Yes, everything is clear, professionally competent, accessible! Well done!! Thank you!!! Respect

[SamvelRubinyan]

We are witnessing a scenario described in the book by Arthur Grandi. When the financial world is based on a weak currency like the dollar, chaos will continue and bubbles will enter the market duplicating the bubble of the financial system. The new formula described in the book "Grand Time" was created to strengthen the financial system and take it to a new level.

[CarlosCampbell-ev]

HIT 10K TODAY. I'M REALLY GRATEFUL FOR ALL THE KNOWLEDGE AND NUGGETS YOU HAD THROWN MY WAY OVER THE LAST MONTHS.

[shasan]

Temu makes my “too good to be true” sensors go off

[Sprcd]

Seeing this video made me install Temu

[yanglinluo]

I live in NZ and used Temu a few times. Some were fantastic some where average. Still a whole lot cheaper than nz. So no regrets.

[anam.caballerowilson]

Actually all products in America is made in Asia. They just shove brands name. Even Apple 😅 costs dependent on type of materials but Temu really good. Surprisingly

[OscarShu]

Many ask why the US price is so much higher? The real reason is the currency exchange rate, USD to CNY is ~1:7, the average monthly salary of after tax in the US is about 4000 USD, while in China, it is about 4000 RMB. Basic living things are about the same number, like If you try to buy a can of soda from vending machine, it is 1.5 USD in the US vs 2 RMB in China, a meal outside is about 20 USD vs 20 RMB. Given this background, then a 14 RMB phone case that totally makes sense in China suddenly becomes incredibly cheap for 2 USD. It is that simple. Previously, vendors in Amazon would buy the $2 phone case and mark it up to ~$10 which is still very cheap in the US but now PDD/Temu tries to let those factories sell that $2 phone case to you, just the shipping takes 2 weeks.
Finally, the question is why the USD to CNY is ~1:7 in the first place?