Most people stop thinking after they see a price. Quality and supply chain implications are ignored with willfulness.
If you can afford to shop exclusively at Patagonia, that's wonderful! But I often feel like the western brands are mad at Temu primarily for giving consumers back all the middle-man markups, so billionaires like Lawrence Stroll stop getting their cut when people buy from Temu instead of Ralph Lauren (and just keep the extra money that those owners are used to capturing).
If that's also useful for undercutting competition or scoring some other political/economic points, you can pretty much count on it.
Hating Nestlé is niche. Hating the Russians is partisan. Hating the Chinese is mainstream consensus.
Consider how confident you are in the slave labor accusation, for example. This was a thread about a non-compete dispute.
What's your point? As the great philosophy show house of cards suggested: when the tits that big, everybody gets in line.
So all companies will use slave labour if it makes them more money. There is no moral high ground anywhere.
I've significantly reduced my spending on Amazon, do not plan on renewing Prime this year, and would never use Temu because there is just too high a chance of getting bottom of the barrel crap from a nonsensically named Chinese company that will shut down and restart with a new name after it becomes obvious they sell only garbage.
You get some companies like Anker that are rising above the crap but I don't have the time to learn about the few Chinese companies doing good by the consumers and don't want to have to spend hours vetting whether my tooth brush holder has lead or the brushes will tip over because it's not actually tall enough to properly hold a toothbrush. I'll just buy from Target.
If I'm going to roll the dice or know of a trustworthy brand from China I'll just use AliExpress.
You also get to inspect things a bit before you buy them. My girlfriend tried Temu, I explained what she was likely going to get, she insisted that the price was so good "we would be losing money by not buying it", the order arrived (late) and was the quality I expected, she realized it wasn't worth it and deleted the app. If we went to Walmart and saw the same things for the same price, she wouldn't have even wanted to touch them. There's no guarantee a shirt you get from Walmart will last, but you at least know the fabric is thicker than toilet paper before you buy.
>pays for return shipping
They're the same picture.
No, I want you jerks to pay UPS to fly this crap back to you, but they won’t. We all need to standup against the infiltration of Chinese poisoned goods. Demand they take them back and your expense. The post service needs reform too, why is it cheaper to ship from China than ship across your own city? It’s ridiculous.
>The post service needs reform too, why is it cheaper to ship from China than ship across your own city?
This Planet Money episode talks about it (although from 2018): https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...
It's vinyl and it's awful. That fake leather degrades really fast if you expose it to the sun. Thrift stores especially end up with a lot of second-hand products made of it already shedding. I'm not a huge fan of leather, but at least it lasts almost forever.
Is American target substantially different from Australian target?
The brands don't really do this dilution in other countries yet, and temu is still a diceroll, but I broadly agree with the GP
The Nikes you get at a department store have always been terrible compared to what you get at Foot Locker for example. Nike won't even allow certain sneakers to be sold depending on the level they judge the store to be.
The Ralph Lauren flagship store in Tokyo or NYC will generally have a better selection than the department store. A Macy's in Chicago will have a far better selection of a brand than a Macy's in a mid tier suburb. In college, I went to a mall serving an extremely rural community and a major college, and nearly everything in the casual section of the department store was extremely cheap and camo.
Its just market segmentation.
Online, the clothing brands I buy from directly tend to be of the quality I expect. Buying a polo from Amazon will be just as much of a crap shoot as buying from Temu, but the online store will generally have the quality shirt you've been buying.
What’s this practice called?
Market segmentation
I once got a badminton birdie from Walmart that, when hit with a racket, rather than bounce and fly off across the court, fell rather lazily to the ground.
The floor for Walmart is pretty darn low.
But it’s not a binary choice between “luxury” logos and sketchy random quality junk on temu and Amazon. Simple mindfulness when purchasing things would benefit everyone - including the person doing the buying.
Temu is often selling stuff to Americans at a loss, to be fair, and even that bleeding is staunched by their access to low-cost shipping agreements. But yeah, even if you did factor in those costs, the final product would still be a fair bit cheaper than the same version sold in US retail stores.
The first time. Then they learn. Assuming the consumer is stupid is part of what downed Wish [1].
[1] https://ir.wish.com/news-releases/news-release-details/wish-...
Yes it’s a “fine” if a few million Americans support that… no issues at all.
Not surprised at all. The prices are too good to ignore for the average American. Amazon's quality is also a dumpster fire these days so there is no point paying higher prices.
Shareholder-extraction-driven companies like Amazon just cannot compete with market-capture-driven companies. Amazon NEEDS to keep prices high to return value to shareholders. Temu doesn't need to yet.
How is the average consumer supposed to know that Shanghai/chinese labor laws are this incredibly abusive. and isn't that the fault of the legal system over there? I don't think any profit seeking western company would ever think twice about abusing the legal system if it can profit from it: just look at the entire industry of patent litigation, ISPs, insurance quoting, the list goes on, etc!
As for cheap goods. I've ordered quite a bit from that platform. they have very very good return policy, i can assure you. You just need to be smart about only ordering things where quality isn't the highest concern. For example, garden labels. you can't mess those up. Electronics are a bit iffy. but irrigation supplies, i've had good luck with.
> Last month, the arbitrator ruled in Pinduoduo’s favour, ordering Yao to pay his former company damages, lawyers’ fees, and return the Rmb11,000 he had earned in gardening leave pay. Altogether he owes Pinduoduo Rmb438,000 ($61,000).
Wild.
I’m surprised people use temu at all. I was surprised to see it air ads on the Super Bowl.