Recently, the sudden change in the US tariff policy has brought a significant impact on cross-border merchants in the direct shipping model. Against this background, Temu is accelerating the promotion of semi-hosted business and plans to launch a third-party platform model in March 2025. The new model allows sellers to independently select products, set prices, and ship directly to overseas markets, while the platform makes profits through commissions. This change marks the diversification of Temu's business model, forming a new pattern of three parallel operating models: full hosting, semi-hosted, and third-party platforms.

For cross-border sellers, Temu's new model brings both opportunities and challenges. How to seize the market opportunity in this change has become the focus of all sellers.

Temu opens a new model, and sellers have more autonomy

1. The market entry threshold is lowered, and high-value categories are experiencing an explosion

Previously, Temu's product selection range was mainly concentrated on fast-moving consumer goods with low customer unit prices, such as clothing, daily necessities, and small appliances. Under the third-party model, Temu will further expand its categories to cover high-value categories such as home furnishings, electronic accessories, and auto accessories. This means that sellers who were previously unable to enter the platform due to category restrictions now have the opportunity to explore high-potential markets such as North America and Europe through Temu.

More importantly, Temu is lowering the entry threshold for sellers. For small and medium-sized sellers, this will be an excellent opportunity to test the international market at a low cost, not only relying on Temu's traffic support, but also flexibly adjusting product strategies and quickly responding to market demand.

2. Traffic and logistics support, a new engine for seller growth

In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the third-party model, Temu may give sellers more support in terms of traffic exposure and logistics fulfillment.

✅ Traffic support: High-quality sellers will receive exclusive traffic entrances, and the platform will help sellers increase sales through advertising, homepage recommendations, search optimization, etc.

✅ Logistics subsidies: Temu may open overseas warehousing and self-built logistics networks to reduce sellers' fulfillment costs and improve the delivery time of cross-border orders.

✅ User experience upgrade: Through a rich variety of product categories, Temu will attract more consumers, improve user stickiness, and further enhance the platform's global competitiveness.

For sellers, these support policies can not only help them gain a foothold in Temu faster, but also achieve performance growth with the help of platform resources.

New model, but also new challenges

1. Price war and traffic competition

Temu's core advantage lies in its low-price strategy, which means that newly joined third-party sellers are likely to face fierce price wars. With the advantage of supply chain, top sellers are more likely to monopolize traffic, while small and medium-sized sellers will be squeezed if they do not have accurate product positioning.

2. High standard operation requirements

Temu has high requirements for sellers' delivery time, customer service response, after-sales processing and other operation standards. For novice sellers, how to quickly adapt to platform rules and provide high-quality services is a major challenge.

3. Capital and inventory pressure

Temu may set a 15-30 day account period, which puts higher requirements on sellers' cash flow management. At the same time, there is a risk of inventory backlog when stocking up in overseas warehouses in advance. Sellers need to accurately predict market demand to avoid excess inventory.

4. Rising compliance risks

European and American markets are increasingly strict in regulating product certification, VAT taxation, and intellectual property rights. Sellers must make compliance preparations in advance, otherwise they will not only face platform penalties, but may also be involved in legal proceedings.

Faced with challenges, how can sellers stand out in the new model?

Faced with the challenges of the new model, sellers need to do enough homework in product selection, supply chain, and fulfillment to ensure sustained growth under Temu's third-party model.

1. Accurate product selection to avoid price wars

Under the third-party model, sellers should avoid blindly entering the red ocean competition, but should accurately select products to create competitive differentiation.

Choose products that meet local market needs, such as environmentally friendly products and products that adapt to local culture.

Increase customer unit price through bundling sales, member discounts, holiday promotions, etc.

Pay attention to important European and American festivals (such as Black Friday and Christmas season), and plan holiday hot-selling categories in advance.

2. Supply chain optimization, using overseas warehouses to improve fulfillment efficiency

Compared with domestic direct delivery, local warehousing + local distribution will become the best solution.

Layout of overseas warehouses in the United States: By establishing inventory in the United States, the delivery cycle can be greatly shortened and the buyer experience can be improved. For example, U-Speed has overseas warehouses in the East and West of the United States to meet the storage needs of sellers for different goods.

Reduce logistics costs: The local warehouse model reduces cross-border logistics links and saves 20%-30% of transportation costs.

Improve conversion rate: European and American consumers are increasingly concerned about delivery speed, and fast delivery can greatly increase the order conversion rate.

Return management is equally important, and U-Speed helps sellers deal with it easily

With the development of Temu's third-party model, return processing has also become an important part that sellers cannot ignore. U-Speed's US return warehouse provides a one-stop return solution to help Temu sellers deal with return issues efficiently.

U-Speed US return warehouse service advantages

✅ Covering the entire United States, efficient return processing:

There are three major return warehouses in the East (New Jersey) and West (Los Angeles), processing more than 20,000 returns per day.

24-hour security monitoring to ensure the safety of goods.

✅ Return quality inspection + secondary sales to reduce losses:

Returned goods are quality inspected within 48 hours, and goods that meet the standards can be put on the shelves again to reduce losses.

Value-added services such as labeling, re-labeling, and repackaging can be provided to help sellers quickly handle returned goods.

✅ Flexible return solutions to meet different needs:

Return to China: Applicable to high-value goods, which can be returned to China (Hong Kong) through U-Speed cross-border logistics.

Local destruction: Handle goods that cannot be resold to avoid additional storage costs.

The launch of Temu's third-party model provides sellers with more flexible operating options and also brings higher competitive challenges. Accurate product selection, optimized supply chain, and improved fulfillment efficiency will become the key for sellers to stand out. At the same time, efficient return management is also crucial. U-Speed US return warehouse provides Temu sellers with professional, efficient, and flexible return solutions to help sellers gain a foothold in the highly competitive market environment.