How TEMU is Similar to MLMs
After the Superbowl of 2022, the world was abuzz with links to a new shopping at promoting, “shopping like a billionaire.” My mother bought me my first TEMU item almost immediately after—an adorable tiny teal Peep Easter plushie which I love to this day. TEMU offered regular products at super low prices, often undercutting even dollar stores.
This is not an outside looking in look at TEMU. They offered an affiliate program that was different than others, instead of simply linking your friends and family to the app to make purchases, you “played games” together to win prizes. Quickly many people caught on to the games and how they weren’t games at all. Predetermined results would decide how many new users (and in some cases existing users) would be necessary to get your allotted prize. Normally, the more your chosen gifts cost, the more you would have to recruit. This reminds me, of course, of an MLM.
In the prime of these TEMU games, I probably racked up around $1,000 in free items. Although, this value is questionable because TEMU often hyper-inflates the “real price” to make the items seem more valuable. That said, I got many items and I will admit, the dopamine fix was something that I was pulled into. At a certain point, TEMU regulars learned that there were two ‘games’ at the time that you could win without any new users. These were Fishland and Hat Trick. Eventually they came out with another ‘winnable’ game called Farmland. I remember seeing many friends saying they had never won anything, but not only was I hooked, I was deep into the depths of game knowledge.
The way users regularly won Hat Trick was a revolving group. Members could invite 10-20 existing users to get prizes on what were then called ‘winning boards’ (this was a term the community came up with for non-new user games). If you chose amount that was too high, or through random algorithm, some versions of Hat Trick required new users. In these groups, there’d be a list of users and if the person at the top had a ‘winning board’ all members of the group used their 1 click per day and gave that person their win for the day. 24 hours later, we’d move to the next person on the list. I ran a Hat Trick group for one ‘round-robin’. Eventually TEMU turned off this ability and made Fishland and Farmland take several months to win. The fun was over… but many dollars were pushed out by TEMU in these games during the hay-day.
Those who were most dedicated to winning would post their links in several groups on social media. At one point, I believe I was posting in 21 Facebook groups at a time. I had to manually copy and paste these messages, and more than once Facebook turned off my ability to post to groups and even once locked me out of my account for 24 hours. As somebody with businesses pages, at this point the behaviour and risks were borderline reckless.
To this day I still login to the TEMU app and play the final Fishland game that I started probably in August. The fast-winning train was over, and I’m still looking at the same fish I have been for over half a year. I’ve deleted the app numerous times, but in sleeping-pill induced hazes, I often find myself back with those stupid fish, feeding them virtual food to someday get about $20 worth of products.
The way to earn free products with TEMU was either to understand the way the games worked, like our groups for Hat Trick or Fishland, but in the early days before everybody had already heard of TEMU, the best way to get rewards like $50 gift cards was to invite new users to the app. No purchases necessary. Every new person who was recruited could be purposefully leveraged through their programs to get whatever prize you wanted. TEMU, of course, accesses enough data from your device to know the IEMI of the device, and thus this could only be done with a new device. Many of us wandered around our houses collecting old phones, iPads, tablets, and signed up for TEMU on these too. At some point, they stopped allowing new sign ups without a new phone number as well. I changed my phone number on my second phone more than once to get a new sign up… the levels of involvement were intense.
My husband was confused by the packages which kept shopping up. Most of the time I’d reply, “don’t worry they were free,” and I think that worried him more. Why was I receiving 3 packages a week… and why were they free? My husband is a practical man, a soldier in the military, and is always skeptical when something is too good to be true. I can’t say I blame him. Why were they offering so many free products? What was the catch?
In the beginning, it was reported that TEMU was operating at record losses, tossing out billions of dollars to make shoppers around the globe feel like they were “shopping like a billionaire” and receive free things. As somebody with ample marketing experience at the time, as well as a Political Science background where I focused heavily on globalism, capitalism, and even political socioeconomic policies, I had several thoughts on what was going on.
The first and most likely reason that TEMU was pushing out lbs of free products is practical. It is cheaper to offer free prizes of merchandise than to advertise heavily on every social media platform. For the same reason that MLMs prey upon people who utilize and recruit their friend groups, having your mom, your best friend, or your sister sending you a link is far more compelling than a simple promoted ad. I am aware of at least 3 people who I introduced to the app, all of which made numerous purchases. Many of these people were friends and family. There was almost a pressure in the beginning to recruit because inflation was starting to become rampant, and there was almost a pressure and guilt if I did not share this experience with others who were struggling to afford everyday supplies.
While some of the items purchased on TEMU were things that were unnecessary or just for fun, there were also a lot of items that seemed to be the same companies that were 3x the price on Amazon. I remember my disgust when the $30 makeup mirror I purchased from Amazon months before was about $5 on TEMU. Bakeware, cooking tools, and art supplies are abundant on the app. I have also bought a lot of clothes there and to my surprise I loved the quality—I felt like I was taking a gamble, but most of the products from TEMU lived up to my expectations. Whenever an item did not meet these expectations the customer support was quick and helpful—normally giving a refund without any kind of sending the products back. While there are some people who claim TEMUs items are just “dollarstore quality” I would argue that they are about the same quality as much of Amazon, Walmart, and even places like Old Navy. I think an important thing to note about fashion, especially when we consider vendors in places like Bangladesh, is that most fashion is fast fashion and has a human cost, but that does not mean that the cheap items are any better, or any less quality than the more expensive items from the source.
These small profit margins have continued from TEMU and there have been sellers from the platform that have spoken out about unfair pricing and inventory requirements. Some have even speculated that TEMU is using slave/forced labour for their merchandise. This is something that SHEIN has also faced. It’s worth mention to note that after this boom in TEMU marketing tactics and games, SHEIN and Wish started their own games to try and capitalize on this social marketing phenomenon. Whether it was for better or worse, these tactics were being noticed. As of yet, there is no proof about these forced labour claims, but a reasonably worldly person should always remain skeptical on where items are sourced.
There is a second and more insidious reason why TEMU might be sending out pallets upon pallets of free merchandise. This type of speculation is not new, and has even led to the USA to take action against other Chinese apps, with the Tik Tok bill pending in America as I write this book*. Chinese apps have often been feared to give the information and data that they collect back to the Chinese government. The more people who sign up for the app, the more data that the Chinese government then collects on the masses across the world. This highly addictive, highly social, form of app circulation, may very well have been a way for China to quickly boost their information sector of government. Ick.
Whether these claims turn into something more dramatic on the political scene will have to be discovered as time goes on. However, it was discovered that the TEMU app collects droves of personal information from customer devices, and their parent company Punonduo was removed from the Playstore for abuse of their app and including spyware and Malware. While the above fear that perhaps TEMU is collecting this on behalf of the Chinese government is only one way it might be used. It is also possible that rather than making money off its shoppers, TEMU gathers data and then sells it to other businesses looking to market to people who are likely to buy or who are susceptible to gambling style games and marketing.
At present, I am still shopping on TEMU, and I am not entirely sure if I’ll stop unless something is found out that definitively proves the claims that have been made. However, I do feel like I need to stay away from the social media marketing aspect of it, as that feels more scammy than the rest of the website. However, part of me wonders how this is different than other advertising when they were giving free things, and many people were legitimately inviting their friends and family because they were pleased with the service. This is also probably why many are still using TEMU and purchasing even as the free items have dwindled.
