Amazon just created a Temu clone. Why isn’t it more fun?

Photo: Intelligencer; John Hermann

In less than a decade, Chinese e-commerce sites have reshaped American shopping. A recent analysis from Salesforce found that apps like Temu, Shein, AliExpress and TikTok “will account for one in five purchases during the holiday season.” For Amazon, America’s largest online retailer, these competitors have gone from a fringe trend to a real threat.

And so this week, Amazon is launching Haul, a new space — a storefront, actually — for its hundreds of millions of users. Haul is “a place to discover even more affordable fashion, home, lifestyle, electronics and other products at extremely low prices and typical delivery times of one to two weeks,” the company says. Everything costs less than $20 and is only available on mobile devices. As soon as you open it, the inspiration and intentions are clear: Amazon has built itself a Temu.

If you’ve tried Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop, or even AliExpress, you’ll immediately notice a few familiar things. There’s the busy, animated interface full of enticements: Save 10% on 75! Pssst. Add $18.01 for free shipping! Banners, tickers and buttons eventually give way to a wide, staggered grid – the standard interface of discount shopping apps – full of algorithmically selected products with truly “ultra-low” prices. One of the strange but effective things about these apps is that prices often precede products: the numbers grab your attention, suggest change, and prime the shopper for an impulse purchase. Only Then Is your eye focused on the image and the caption, and even then it’s not always clear what exactly is for sale. This may sound like a strange way to find what you’re looking for, and it is, but that’s not the point. The companies Haul emulates are masters at getting people to scroll, tap, and engage until they finally give in and buy something.

Haul, which is still in beta, doesn’t use all the tricks of discount shopping apps – no pop-up games and spinning wheels yet. But it’s still fascinating to see how Amazon, which almost unilaterally set American norms and expectations for online shopping more than two decades ago, is now completely in hot pursuit. However, at the moment the package appears to be incomplete. I’m not really in the target audience for many of the most popular products here, but over the years of reporting – and some shopping – I’ve spent a lot of time with them. The first issue of Haul is its presentation. All the advertising copy is about “insanely low prices” and “incredible finds”. Everything “sells fast” and there are emojis everywhere: rockets, flames and a variety of shocked and enamored faces. But in 2024, there’s nothing “unbelievable” or “crazy” here, unless you’ve never shopped anywhere but Amazon. A half-dozen wildly popular apps have been selling things in exactly this style and at similarly low prices for years. Haul is another way to stock up on an increasingly globalized inventory of unbranded, slow-shipped goodies and/or junk that speaks for itself in its alternately depressing and seductive overall cheapness.

Haul’s bigger problem is that while it carries many of the same anonymous items – the exact same products with the same promotional images – as Temu or TikTok Shop, it currently appears to have fewer of them. Budget shopping apps work not just because they feel like feeds, but because those feeds are chaotic and unpredictable: you come across a lot of strange items, products that don’t make much sense at first glance, and products or copies of products , This may sound a little familiar to you from social media or the wider world of retail. Recently this has also included more expensive branded items; Both Temu and TikTop Shop have moved into the upscale market to compete more directly with Amazon. At launch, Haul feels very similar to its competitors, except that the most enticing – or at least most stimulating – entries are left out.

Photo: Intelligencer; John Hermann

For example, it was easy to track down advertised and (supposedly) popular Haul products on Temu. A wall-mounted tissue box that looks like a bear costs $6.99; At Temu, it’s $6.29 and comes with a free shipping promotion (shipping purchases include Amazon’s money-back guarantee, but not Prime shipping – like similar apps, shipping takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks). The product is the same. The product Pictures are the same. You can repeat this process with almost anything: the same anonymous phone case at Haul for $3 and Temu for $3.60; a yard sign that reads “Hello Soccer” with the same fake and misleadingly proportioned product image for $2.99 ​​at Haul and $2.84 at Temu.

Photo: Intelligencer; John Hermann

It was more insightful to try this experiment the other way around. Earbuds are always a useful benchmark for discount apps: there are a ton of branded and non-branded options; They’re desirable, sell a lot, and get prime placement and discount treatment. Haul just doesn’t have any at the moment – just a few rubber sleeves, tips and other accessories. After a while, you realize why Haul feels more like an algorithmically disorganized wholesale catalog than the hyper-promotional “shop like a billionaire!” manipulation machines it’s based on: Where are the dodgy face-sculpting tools? The TikTok-famous alarm clocks? Where are all the Stanley Tumbler dupes??? There are many examples like this that seem like a big oversight, but may also be something Amazon can fix – if it wants to. Meanwhile, to borrow a joke, Haul feels like a Temu…Temu.

However, it is possible that these gaps point to a more fundamental challenge for the entire company. Haul is a response to companies undercutting Amazon by shipping products directly from sellers in China. If these competitors sold a completely different range of products, Haul’s existence would make a lot more sense. However, companies like Temu are increasingly selling the same things you find in Amazon’s main store.

For years, Amazon’s sales have been dominated not just by third-party sellers, but also by foreign third-party sellers, mostly based in China and with access to significant manufacturing capacity and cheap labor. This shift began long before the advent of apps like Temu and has been a pretty good deal for cross-border sellers and Amazon alike. Chinese merchants gained access to American customers and Amazon’s logistics and delivery infrastructure; Amazon charged sellers significant fees for storing and distributing goods and for access to Amazon Prime. By favoring Amazon sellers directly from China over domestic sellers who often source their products from China anyway, Amazon believes it has eliminated middlemen. Now Amazon is obviously the remaining middleman, and its competitors are also ruthlessly trying to exclude it – thanks to a favorable (and recently threatened) set of shipping and tax policies. The least flattering comparison for Amazon is not Haul vs. Temu or TikTok, but Temu vs Amazon, where you could already find many Temu type products sold at much higher prices (but with faster shipping) and where you may Buy earbuds, but they cost twice as much as those shipped directly from Guangdong Province.

Before Haul, Amazon and its new competitors were already selling many of the same things.
Photo Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Temu, TikTok Shop, Amazon and AliExpress

Here you can follow the logic of Amazon’s internal division: cheap imports go There, while high-margin logistics customers sell Here – But its competitors don’t have to act this way, and it reduces the competitiveness of each company. Amazon needs to protect its much more profitable core brand and perhaps hold back some of its more lucrative categories altogether. Temu can sell whatever it wants, at least as long as its parent company is willing to subsidize the attack on Amazon. A reasonable argument for Amazon Haul is that Amazon may be able to convert some new budget shoppers into lifetime Prime customers. The strongest argument, however, is that it probably had no choice.

Haul also comes at a strange political time. Amazon, which has deep economic ties to and dependencies on China, has been trying to figure out how to respond to foreign e-commerce platforms for years, and its response came just in time as two major complications arose. One comes from the Biden administration, in the concrete and targeted form of proposals to limit so-called restrictions de minimis shipments. These exempt low-value items from import duties and taxes and benefit platforms such as Temu and Shein (the main categories addressed here include clothing). Significant changes could come into force as early as December – although the proposals may still fail.

The other complication comes from the new Trump administration, which has promised broad and severe tariffs on imports from many countries, with particularly high tariffs proposed on products from China. The potential consequences here range from unpleasant but ultimately beneficial for Amazon (these policies could weaken Haul, but more importantly would neutralize Temu and TikTok) to outright disaster for the company (massive price increases for the majority of what Amazon sells). The next few months will be crucial for Haul and for the Everything Store itself. In the meantime, enjoy Black Friday.