David has spent the past two and a half years building a top-selling store on Amazon. From his office in Shanghai, China, he sells craft products to customers, most of whom are in the US. He has had to work hard to get to the top of sales rankings. As well as spending big on advertising, he paid to get his products tested by a Swiss company, SGS, which inspects and certifies products, so that he can reassure American customers who are put off by “made in China” products. “It is very costly to generate momentum on Amazon,” he says.
In May, David was browsing through Temu, an ecommerce platform owned by the Chinese tech giant PDD that has grown dramatically since launching in the US last September. He was surprised to find two listings that looked identical to his own best-selling products. The pictures were the same, and the product descriptions used the same keywords.
“I took and edited these photos myself, after spending a lot of time learning photography and photoshop,” says David, who asked that his name be changed because he was worried about retaliation from Temu. “I have used many different photos and did multiple rounds of testing, the product photos I am using now have the best conversion rate.”
The duplicate listings, which WIRED has examined, even list the test certificates from Switzerland—with his company address on them. The versions of the product on Temu are 30 percent cheaper. Over the past month, David’s sales of those two products have fallen by more than 20 percent. He can’t say for sure that the drop is linked to the Temu listings, but he suspects there’s a correlation.
David’s experience is not unique. WIRED has examined dozens of cases in which Amazon sellers from China claim to have found their listings, including product images, descriptions, and “browse trees”—a way to optimize product listings. Many of those claims seem to bear out, with storefronts on Temu using images and text that first appeared on Amazon listings. Those affected say they have complained to Temu and requested that the pictures be taken down, without success.
Temu did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon spokesperson Mira Dix said via email: “We strongly condemn this type of criminal activity. If a brand believes their Amazon product information or images are being copied and used to sell infringing products elsewhere, we encourage them to contact our Counterfeit Crimes Unit.”
Temu’s business model is based on selling low-cost unbranded goods to price-sensitive consumers. Most of those products are sourced from producers in China, some of whom previously worked with PDD’s Chinese ecommerce platform, Pinduoduo. Temu’s sellers are independent businesses who sell through the platform. An investigation by WIRED in May showed that Temu, which has been trying to break into the US market and compete with Amazon using aggressive discounting, had pressured sellers in its own supply chain to drop their prices to help it undercut rivals.
Selling on ecommerce platforms is not as simple as posting a couple of pictures and a price tag. Sellers often invest quite heavily in high-quality photos, and they experiment with product descriptions, the design of their storefronts, and other information to increase their chances of getting into search rankings and in front of customers.