The race to bring China-made goods to Western consumers through online stores is heating up. Pinduoduo, the Chinese e-commerce giant that has made a name for itself with impossible-to-believe deals, has gained tremendous momentum for its first international foray in the United States.

The company's overseas shopping app, known as Temu, briefly claimed the top spot of Android shopping apps in the U.S. in mid-September before dipping to No. 15 this week, according to the app analytics platform Data.ai. The rankings indicate new downloads, so it's difficult to gauge the app's user retention and activeness.

At first glance, Temu does not look very different from other e-commerce platforms that export cheap goods from China, whether it is Amazon, Alibaba's AliExpress, or Wish. Its landing page is a dazzling collection of competitively priced products, from a $2.77 blouse to a $1.39 soap holder.

Pinduoduo is relatively a late entrant into the cross-border e-commerce scene. In almost all major markets outside China, it is easy to find an online retailer importing goods directly from Chinese vendors or manufacturers. Alibaba-owned Lazada and Tencent-backed Shopee dominate Southeast Asia. AliExpress is also a favorite in Russia. Shein, the fast fashion e-commerce site that is rapidly growing its product category, has become the favorite shopping app for teenagers across Europe and the U.S.

One reason Temu has an advantage over its competition is extensive networks with factories in China. Pinduoduo was started in 2015, but it soon shot up as a serious rival to Alibaba, which started twelve years before the former was formed. This fast growth of the company has been attributed to its innovative strategy of cutting out the middleman, which in turn lets the company shave off some middlemen expenses and later market products far cheaper than competitors that operate through various levels of distributors.

It seems that Pinduoduo will continue to play to its supply chain strength as it goes abroad. Just this week, the firm announced that it will invest "tens of billions of RMB" ($1 = RMB 7) in "cultivating 100 export-oriented brands." In doing so, the initiative aims to help 10,000 domestic manufacturers sell globally.

Pinduoduo isn't particularly known for brand building as its success is rooted in selling white-label goods at slashed prices. It remains to be seen whether this initiative can help factory products break the stereotype of "cheap Chinese goods.

Temu has an upper hand in product sourcing, at least because Pinduoduo's resources at the supply chain, though likely to struggle with user acquisition strategy that powered the acceleration of Pinduoduo back home. When newly established, Pinduoduo relied very much on WeChat by Tencent where users would invite friends or contacts to participate in a group purchase to share promotions.

It has worked quite well in China, considering WeChat has long been a platform that morphed into so much more than being an actual messenger app. There's actually a mini app ecosystem natively integrated with the social feature, which is lacking in their Western counterparts like WhatsApp. Westernly, Temu can take a few tips from Shein and the utilization of TikTok/Instagram influencer marketing.

Temu may also experience the same problems that are troubling Shein. The fast fashion upstart has been criticized multiple times for its obscure supply chain practices and accused of violating intellectual property rights. In 2019, the U.S. put Pinduoduo on its infamous blacklist over suspected counterfeits, though the company has vowed to crack down on counterfeits.