I know this isn’t an ad for Temu, but it makes me curious about it. I assumed it was a Slicker AliExpress.
Kinda.
It's Chinese owner Pinduoduo is competing at the low value market with Alibaba, while JD is competing with Alibaba on the higher value market.
Pinduoduo is going through the hypergrowth expansion phase right now to compete with Alibaba now that they have become complacent after Jack Ma did some scummy stuff at Ant Group.
The others were never as aggressive in their quest for monopolies and made it on some other merit. Not to say the others are much better, but Temu will have to make that money back somehow, eventually.
Basically price-dumping to destroy the competition and gain market share.
What I've noticed from Aliexpress reviews is that a lot of reviews are from places that don't have much of an Amazon footprint (e.g. Russia, E. Europe, Mid east).
The other thing is that ship-from-China circumvents a lot of duties that can be hefty on some goods. And sometimes sales taxes (not in USA anymore, but still true elsewhere).
Also, is wish.com the same thing as temu, or basically the same thing? I mean, there's some tungsten ring for 50 cents on it that like another poster I might buy that and 20$ of other things just to see what actually arrives.
and a more proper (and $$$) method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqupCjkNqUk