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Journalists all over the world rely on Marketplace Pulse insights and data for their stories. Marketplace Pulse works with leading magazines, newspapers, and online publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and CNBC.

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"According to Marketplace Pulse..."

Journalists all over the globe rely on our insights and data for their stories. Here are some of the most recent articles Marketplace Pulse was featured in.

Why PDD Holdings' Temu Just Might Be A Serious Threat

"Temu is a threat to Amazon at certain price points, certain categories and for certain people," Juozas Kaziukenas, founder and chief executive of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, told Investor's Business Daily. "We don't yet know how big that is."

Shipping directly from China to customers in other countries means delivery can take longer, compared with Amazon and other companies with local logistics operations. The Temu shopping site says shipping can take six to 22 days. On the other hand, "Temu launched in 50 countries in a year, which wouldn't be physically possible if you had to build warehouses and store products locally," Kaziukenas of Marketplace Pulse told IBD.

Investor's Business Daily
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Is Temu Legit? Every Question You Have, Answered

Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, calls the strategy a “shock-imposed buy”: When the price of something is so unbelievably low that customers have no choice but to hit “purchase.”

New York Magazine
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Chinese Shopping App Temu Censors Searches For ‘Trump’ And ‘Biden’

“I get why they would not show results for banned topics in China, but not showing results for U.S. topics is odd,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, the CEO of Marketplace Pulse, an independent e-commerce analysis firm, told Forbes. “Temu seems to be trying to preemptively avoid embarrassment or bad PR, but no other retailer approaches the same way.”

Forbes
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America Is Nowhere Near Peak Stuff

This, according to the e-commerce analyst and Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukėnas, is among the reasons that ultra-cheap retailers that ship to the U.S. from overseas have found such enthusiastic audiences. “During uncertain economic times,” he told me, “price tends to bubble up to become the most important variable” in how even greater numbers of people make purchase decisions.

Confounding all of this is the reality that price and quality are not as closely tied to each other as they once were. Kaziukėnas challenged a common assumption that the novelty of stores like Temu and Shein will have to wear off eventually: Not everything they sell is as off-putting or low quality in person as you might think. Much of it, according to Kaziukėnas, is identical to what American brands and retailers sell—it is, after all, coming from existing manufacturers—but at a much lower price. Temu and Shein were designed to drive overhead down to a minimum: They’ve bet that lots of people are willing to trade instant shipping and robust customer service for lower prices, and they’ve largely been right. American retailers’ emphasis on speed and variety requires more overhead because they’ve built systems with more steps between manufacturers and buyers. “Amazon and eBay would happily replicate Temu’s ship-from-China model if they hadn’t spent decades optimizing for a different kind of experience,” Kaziukėnas said.

When you look at the data, lots of people who say they hate this phenomenon of cheap, high-volume consumption tend to be enthusiastic participants in it. Kaziukėnas pointed to a recent report published by The New Consumer and the venture-capital firm Coefficient Capital that found that Shein shoppers are considerably more likely to express concern about the environment and sustainability than shoppers overall. “There is a disconnect between what we tell ourselves, what we tell others, and how we behave,” Kaziukėnas said.

The Atlantic
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Temu Wants More; Inks Deal for U.S. Push

Though WinIt and Easy Export have signed on as U.S. fulfillment partners, analysis by Marketplace Pulse shows that none of the sellers on Temu’s U.S. marketplace have primary places of business in the U.S. According to Juozas Kaziukėnas, the founder and CEO of the analytics and research firm, Temu’s 5,000-plus U.S. marketplace sellers are actually operated by Chinese companies.

“We’ve only seen Chinese sellers entering [Temu’s marketplace] in the U.S. These two logistics companies also seem to be very focused on Chinese cross-border commerce,” he said. “So if anything, this is a service to Chinese sellers that currently don’t have inventory in the U.S., [or] don’t have a 3PL in the U.S., and this is a path for them to to set it up.”

Sourcing Journal
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Andy Jassy says Amazon has a ‘great relationship’ with sellers. Longtime sellers say it’s ‘the worst it’s ever been’

Juozas Kaziukėnas, the founder and CEO of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, compared Jassy’s comments to a couples’ counselor that “effectively said that sellers’ concerns were invalid.”

“We don’t know yet if the FTC will be able to prove that Amazon is at fault but, if anything, Amazon’s communication and dialogue with sellers—that Andy says Amazon has a great relationship with—could be improved.”

Fortune
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How TikTok Shop Became The Internet’s Favorite New Dollar Store

But inconsistency has made the platform less compelling for bigger companies. “This is terrible for normal brands because none of this is replicable,” Juozas Kaziukėnas, the CEO of Marketplace Pulse, an independent e-commerce analysis firm told Forbes. “It’s like replicating user-generated content, there’s no formula – but when it works, it works beautifully.”

Forbes
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TikTok ban could harm Amazon sellers looking for alternatives

Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, an e-commerce intelligence firm, doubts TikTok will ever replace Amazon. “It doesn’t have the broad selection and fulfilment, and shoppers in the West are used to search-based e-commerce,” he said. “But many people spend many hours using TikTok every day, thus, sometimes they will buy things on it.”

“In the U.S. and other countries in the West, shopping apps developed in parallel with apps that provide entertainment or connection like social media. We got used to getting different things from different apps, as opposed to going to one place for it all,” he added.

“Today, social apps like TikTok are trying to figure out shopping before retailers like Amazon figure out social (like through Amazon Inspire). But the status quo of different apps serving different needs remains.”

TechCrunch
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"Potenzieller Amazon-Killer": Temu plant Öffnung für europäische Marken

Der nächste strategische Schritt von Pinduoduo (PDD), dem Mutterkonzern von Temu, wird in den USA bereits umgesetzt: Dort können lokale Händler*innen und Hersteller seit Mitte März auch selbst Marktplatzpartner von Temu werden – zumindest in der Theorie. Laut Recherchen von Marketplace Pulse gibt es bislang noch keine US-Verkäufer, stattdessen habe Temu mit dem Onboarding von rund 1000 chinesischen Verkäufern begonnen, deren Inventar sich in lokalen Lagern in den USA befände, heißt es.

OMR Online Marketing Rockstars
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How the maker of a top-selling ‘TikTok-native’ brand became a full-time content creator

Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, which tracks e-commerce trends, explained that while brands on other platforms such as Amazon or Etsy gradually build up recognition through ad buys, reviews, and search rankings, this approach is “completely flipped on its head” for TikTok, because users generally don’t search for products but rather discover them in algorithmically selected videos.

This basic difference gave Kaziukėnas a hunch that the most popular products on TikTok Shop would be those peddled by established influencers such as Kim Kardashian or MrBeast. “But that’s not necessarily the case at all,” he said.

Retail Brew
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Temu Opens Its Marketplace to US-Based Sellers

Business Insider previously reported that US Amazon sellers were largely eager to try selling on Temu once it was made available to them. Notably, the sellers that are on the new US marketplace so far seem to be Chinese sellers who have warehouses in the US, not American-grown brands, according to Marketplace Pulse. Many of them also sell on Amazon.

Business Insider
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Here's how Amazon aggregators are valuing brands now

“The industry is much more quiet and much more deliberately trying to readjust and find something that works while trying to find some way to survive,” he said. “It’s not that roll-ups don’t work — it’s that the particular strategies of the roll-ups don’t work.”

As such, aggregators are pitching themselves as more niche platforms focused on something beyond acquisition at scale. If a company describes itself as an Amazon-only aggregator, “that phrase will get you deleted from the [investor’s inbox],” said Kaziukėnas.

Modern Retail
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America loves Temu. Will our adoration last for this shopping app?

Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, says beyond Temu’s marketing savvy, it has advantages that Wish didn’t. Temu can harness PDD’s track record in wrangling large numbers of Chinese vendors and ensuring orders arrive efficiently at your door, he said.

Washington Post
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US-Based Amazon Sellers Eager for Temu Platform Launch

Industry experts expect the first merchants to make use of the new model will likely be Chinese sellers who have warehouse operations in the US. Many of them also sell on Amazon and use Amazon's fulfillment services.

"What they sell is exactly what is being sold on Temu already," Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder and CEO of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, said.

"Temu seems to have already started the recruitment of sellers in China," he added, citing Chinese media reports about Temu's attendance at recent seller events in China.

Business Insider
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Win Brands Group had its third round of layoffs in 12 months

“Perhaps the runway that those companies had financially — as well as the patience and willingness by investors to wait even longer — is running out,” said Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse, speaking about the aggregator space in general.

These issues were certainly exacerbated by rising interest rates over the last two years. “You cannot operate with expensive debt or expensive capital,” Kaziukėnas said. “If the thing you are using to run these aggregators is expensive capital, it’s near impossible to work. You are just servicing the debt… That is the knife that is killing many of these aggregators”

Modern Retail
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Arnault-Backed Razor Buys Perch in Amazon ‘Aggregator’ Shakeout

“This seems to be the year where the few aggregators that are doing well are raising more capital and swallowing the rest,” said Juozas Kaziukenas, the chief executive officer of Marketplace Pulse, which has tracked the industry. “We’re going to go from about 100 aggregators at the peak to a dozen or so that survive.”

Bloomberg
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