Why Temu’s Growth Is Good News for Premium eCommerce Brands

Something interesting happened at the REED Gift Fair in Sydney back in February. An Australian representative of Temu — yes, that Temu — was doing the rounds of exhibitor stalls, pitching premium brand founders on the idea of listing their products on the platform.

The pitch was essentially this: Temu is working on repositioning itself away from cheap, disposable, poor-quality products and towards a more quality-forward marketplace model. Think Amazon. They wanted premium brands to help them get there.

Nobody seemed particularly keen.

And yet, many of those same brand founders have spent the past twelve months quietly panicking about Temu’s growth — convinced that the rise of cheap platforms means they need to get more competitive on price.

This episode is about why that conclusion is exactly backwards.

The race to the bottom has a floor

Temu built a multi-billion-dollar business on being the cheapest option available. And now they’re standing at a premium gift fair, trying to convince quality brands to lend them some of their credibility.

That is not the behaviour of a winning strategy. That is the behaviour of a brand that has discovered, at scale, that ‘cheapest’ is a ceiling masquerading as a strategy. You can’t build loyalty on price alone. You can’t build repeat purchase behaviour on price alone. And you absolutely cannot build the kind of brand equity that makes customers choose you when there’s always something cheaper available.

The premium brand founders watching Temu grow and concluding they need to discount more are trying to race towards the position Temu is desperately trying to race away from.

What the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026 actually tells us

The Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026 landed recently, and the headline number is significant: Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025. That’s up 14% year-on-year, during a period of genuine cost-of-living pressure.

The money is not gone. It is being spent. The question is whether your brand is positioned to receive it.

Here’s the nuance worth paying attention to: average basket size has dropped slightly, to $96, but purchase frequency has increased — Australians made four more online purchases per year compared to the year before. The average household now shops across 16 different brands per year, up from fewer than eight a decade ago.

This is the fingerprint of price-driven, discount-led buying. Smaller baskets, more transactions, less loyalty, more promiscuity. That pattern belongs to a specific type of buyer. It is not the behaviour of the premium buyer — who is still spending, still buying from brands they trust, and is considerably less susceptible to the pull of a flash sale or a cheaper alternative.

The dupe conversation and what it reveals

The recent episode on why premium buyers don’t buy from ads alone sparked a fascinating conversation in the comments, particularly around Kmart dupe products. Several commenters suggested that when a dupe floods the market, the original brand loses its appeal.

That is a real phenomenon — but it describes a specific type of buyer, not all buyers. For the price-motivated shopper, exclusivity and status are part of the product’s value. When a $12 version appears at Kmart, the original’s appeal diminishes because the signal it sends has been diluted.

The premium buyer does not work this way. For a customer who buys based on quality, values, craftsmanship, and identity, the existence of a Kmart dupe is irrelevant at best and validating at worst. It confirms the original is desirable enough to imitate. Louis Vuitton has had a counterfeit market for fifty years. It has not hurt them with their actual customers.

The brands who panic when dupes appear are the brands who have accidentally built their customer base around price-motivated buyers — and that is a positioning problem, not a product problem.

What to do in April instead of going quiet

April sits in an awkward spot on the retail calendar — between the Easter long weekend and Anzac Day, with school holidays running through it. It’s a period when many brands pull back on marketing spend, reduce content output, and wait for conditions to improve.

This is exactly the wrong move. The brands that maintain consistent brand-building activity during quieter periods are the ones with a warm, engaged audience when the next purchase moment arrives. Discovery doesn’t happen at checkout. It happens in the weeks and months before.

Tune in to hear the specific content and marketing activities worth prioritising right now.