So the Temus slogan reads.
In the past year we have Followed Shein’s returns over continents, to colossal layers and Dumping sites And along Smuggling roads.
In the meantime, we have also mapped the biggest competitor.
Who really wants our Temu gadgets?
February 2024.
The world’s most talked about shopping site blur like a casino. There are spinning wheels and free gadgets. Uneven prices and percentages. Pictures and numbers everywhere, with a single goal: to keep us so Long as possible.
Unlike Shein, it is primarily not clothes that attract – but gadgets. Mobile shells, wireless handsets, LED lamps, toys, hair cords, makeup.
An endless flow of ultra -cheap shopping, with free shipping and free returns.
Temus app, launched in September 2022, serves as a marketplace and intermediary where thousands of small, Chinese manufacturers meet us customers. In a short time it has conquered the world.
After a couple Weeks of waiting we open the 550 grams of heavy bag and take out the randomly selected goods – influenced from China, without having been customized or undergoing European control.
1. A children’s game, “Pop Fidget”
Price: SEK 80.97 (40 percent discount)
2. A six -pack of lip balm, “moisturizing and soothing”
Price: SEK 31.49 (62 percent discount)
3. A bag for Nintendo Switch console, “Portable and Waterproof”
Price: SEK 106.48 (52 percent discount)
The goods look different from the pictures. Less. And with more faded colors.
The rabbit in the children’s game stares gloomily at us. The bullets barely pops when we push them down. The lip balm smells stinging chemically, far from soothing.
On March 4, we will provide the goods with AirTags, digital trackers. Prints a return slip, sends them back – and waits.
The explosive Growth is not the only reason why TEMU has been in the eye in the past year.
The alarm reports have been about everything from Toxic substances In the products to the risk of slave labor in the factories. When the industry organization Toy Industries of Europe tested 19 toys from TEMU assessed all but one be directly dangerous for children.
In October, the European Commission began an investigation of Temu for violation of the so-called digital service legislation, which will protect consumers online.
The address on the return slip leads to the shipping company Yun Express in Malmö, a name we recognize from our previous examination by Shein’s returns.
Yun Express specializes in delivering packages from Chinese shopping sites, but have been criticized for non -existent customer service and having avoided following decisions from the General Complaints Board. We have tried to reach them in several ways, without success.
Unlike Shein’s clothing, which was sent to huge layers in Poland, the Temu products already seem to be prepared for a longer trip.
On April 23, we track the goods to the container port in Rotterdam – Europe’s largest and busiest port.
A gigantic facility, forty kilometers long, which receives almost thirty thousand vessels each year.
This is not the final destination but a first transhipment stop. Soon the journey goes on, east.
Temus owner PDD Holdings, who also controls the Chinese shopping site Pinduoduo, is registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven.
The success has made the secret founder Colin Huang, 45, into China’s richest man, with a fortune of over SEK 500 billion.
But the success has also made Temu target.
The Chinese company is accused of constituting a security threat by the Collect Western users’ data. At the same time EU stop the duty -free packages.
The enemy seems to be everywhere – from environmental activists to defense hawks and right -wing nationalists.
But a group remains on Temu’s page: We customers.
The app has been downloaded at least 165 million times In the world. The number of users can be counted to hundreds of millions.
On May 24, our three Temu goods arrive at the port of Jolor Baharu in Malaysia. Nor are they desired here. And the journey continues.
Climate emissions from shipping have increased sharply in line with growing global trade. Most of it indicates that the curve will continue to rise. The connection is clear: Our shopping is pushing for the heating.
After another sixteen days at sea, the Temu products reach the container port of Guangzhou in China-even greater than Rotterdam, with an immense annual freight volume of over 600 million tonnes. It is just as much if each Swede should receive goods weighing 60,000 kilos, each year.
On June 13, we track the package to an area twelve miles north of Guangzhou. Here is the cluster of low-wage factories, where the Temu varies are manufactured. The airports, where they are shipped. The ports, where they return.
Our package is back where it all started.
But the circle will never conclude.
Customers’ requirements on free shipping and free returns drive up costs.
Temu states to have been forced take losses at $ 30 per order to enter the US market.
But the price is high, even for the environment.
-There is a great risk that the environmental impact from e-commerce returns is greater than for regular retail. The practical and economic conditions make the difficult, or, in the worst case, impossible, to re -sell, says Annelise de Jong, researcher at the IVL Swedish Environmental Institute.
Some daySomewhere in China, a decision is made: For the second time, our returns will be sent out into the world.
One of the goods, the children’s game, has stopped sending signals and will remain silent, but much indicates that it continues its journey together with the Nintendo case and the lip balm set.
On July 16, the goods cross the border to Hong Kong and are loaded aboard a northbound ship. They show up in Shanghai, the world’s largest port, just and then turn south again. Back the same way the two months earlier was traveling.
On August 22, they send a signal from Tuas Mega Port in Singapore, a port facility that will swell in 3,300 football pitches in the next few years, marketed internationally as a green Future projects.
The ship they travel further on navigate slowly into the Persian Gulf.
On September 18, they show up in the container port of Umm Qasr, Iraq. Here the goods are finally unloaded.
A few weeks later, the Nintendo case and lip balm set start its last long trip north, along Highway 1-Iraq’s transport nerve, and the advance of American forces during the invasion in 2003.
They travel through barren desert landscapes, and cross the river Euphrates, which according to local water authorities may have dried out Completely in fifteen years.
On October 13, at. 02.15, the goods roll into the capital Baghdad.
We take help by freelance journalist Zhyar Rawf, who goes to the place where the package first arrived, in the eastern part of the city.
Taxis whistles, donkeys rattle. Here is a market specialized in e-replies. Merchant Mohammed Ali sells goods from Shein, Temu and other companies that we Europeans sent back.
– They are popular because they are cheap and customers believe that the quality is higher on goods first sold to Europe. Everyone knows that what is sent here directly from China is rubbish, he says.
The traders have accounts on Tiktok. In quick clips, the return boxes are upturned. Out mowes USB cables, toys, skin creams, electric foot files, vegetable shreds, selfie drones…
Sometimes hundreds of similar goods, sometimes mixed. Everything imported in bulk through a system of contacts and corruption.
Already after a few days, the Nintendo case and the lip balm set move to an address near the al-Kazimiyah Mosque, one of the most important shrines of the Shia Muslims.
Minarets postpone. The security checks and militiamen are everywhere, the steel gates are locked.
The signals lead into an alley. To a house, squeezed between some dust -covered dadel palms.
The family in the building does not let our journalist. Whether the goods are purchased for their own use or for resale remains unclear.
But this is where the Temu Returns’ journey ends, seven and a half months after the package was submitted in Stockholm.
And after a trip of 3,519 miles, as far as the bird path from Trelleborg to Kiruna, 25 times over.
When we contact Temu, we are told that the Chinese shopping giant takes no responsibility. Return handling is entirely on the thousands of small businesses that use the app:
“The seller can choose to resell, get rid of the products or handle them in another way that they consider appropriate.”
At Temu’s Swedish -speaking app, the same lip balm set is still clicked home, now labeled as “best seller”. Buyers should have been close, the journey across the earth and back appears as a mystery. But everything spins.
The price has dropped. SEK 30.35 now.
Flight delivery from China within two weeks. Free shipping – and free return.
Footnote: Aftonbladet has sought Temu with specific questions about the company’s return processes. Temu has responded with the following statement:
“Returned goods are first sent to return facilities where they are inspected, in order to handle repayments. After inspection, the objects are grouped and sent back to each seller, often by boat. The seller can choose to resell, get rid of the products or handle them in another way that they consider appropriate. The products are their property and never belong to Temu. “
This is how the Temu Reters traveled
The returns are submitted to a DHL representative under Åhléns in Stockholm.
All goods arrive at Yun Express in Malmö.
Shows up in Rotterdam.
The three goods are reloaded in Joh Baharu, Malaysia.
The gaming case and lip balm set arrive in Guangzhou, China, and are transported to a layer twelve miles north of the city.
Arrive at Hong Kong.
Sends signal from Shanghai, China.
Arrive at Tua’s Mega Port, Singapore.
Are unloaded in Umm Qasr, Iraq.
Arrive at a magazine in northeastern Baghdad.
Shows up near al-Kazimiyyah mosque in Baghdad.