In Europe, Temu is synonymous with cheap goods – but that's exactly the image its parent company Pinduoduo now wants to shed. In this episode, Ingrid talks to China expert Ed Sander about Xinpinmu, a new private-label division with a planned investment of 100 billion yuan over three years. They discuss why Pinduoduo is hitting growth ceilings both internationally and in its home market in China, how the model differs from Amazon Basics, and why a room full of European tool manufacturers visibly flinched at Ed's warning about Temu's competition. This episode is part one of a two-parter – part two next week covers quick commerce in China. Essential listening for anyone tracking European supply chains and marketplace strategy.

Note from our sponsors: Marketplace Universe Webinars in Fall 2026

Four free webinars with our partners to sharpen your marketplace know-how this fall:

• September 17: Deep Dive TikTok Shop for Brands – with Max Burianek (Head of TikTok Shop Germany) and Florian Bein (Co-Founder, Bedrop). How to tap into a network reaching 200 million people across Europe every month, in time for peak season. → Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/3017834950141/WN_dqKfxbW4RjCETT-iT9sHPA
• September 29: Kaufland Global Marketplace across Europe – with Doreen Schumm (Head of Marketplace Sales, Kaufland) and Etienne Sahin. The expansion across nine countries, from both a platform and a seller perspective. → Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/8817834176445/WN_05pP6JTyRZe1HIQV6d9o2g#/registration
• October 13: Marketplace Seller Trends with ChannelEngine – with Valerie Dichtl and Jorrit Steinz (CEO & Founder, ChannelEngine). The findings from the 2025 Marketplace Shopping Behavior Report. → Register here: https://www.channelengine.com/en/blog/marketplace-seller-insights-and-trends-webinar?utm_campaign=Marketplace-Seller-Report_Sep-Dec_2026&utm_source=Marketplace%20Universe%20SRL&utm_medium=referral_partner&utm_content=webinar
• October 27: CEE markets with BASE – the follow-up to last year's hugely successful session, this time going even deeper into how to successfully expand into this highly interesting but highly competitive market. → Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5317845621934/WN_Ie4XIW_xSu653-xOlmSRKA#/

All dates also at marketplace-universe.com/webinars

Ten years after the Brexit referendum: what did leaving the EU actually do to British e-commerce? The surprising answer from Chloë Thomas – someone who has worked in every conceivable corner of UK online retail for over 20 years, from the agency side to the client side – is that hardly anyone noticed.

Cross-border trade has admittedly become noticeably more complex since Brexit – customs, VAT, new returns logistics. Yet the already extremely domestic-focused British market has barely changed: under 8% of GMV goes abroad, and Amazon still holds around 80% of marketplace sales. The real structural shift is happening elsewhere – established retailers like John Lewis, Next, B&Q, Argos and OnBuy are becoming marketplaces themselves to find additional growth at home.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone weighing up whether the UK is still worth it – and if so, what actually matters when you get there.

50+ marketplaces, one company, remarkably little chaos – that's the puzzle at the heart of this episode. Daniel Müller built his career in mechanical engineering, not fashion – and today runs Leogra Trading and Leogra Services, selling across more than 50 marketplaces with 30,000 to 40,000 SKUs. Over 35% of revenue comes from Germany, with strong positions in Switzerland and the EU, plus niche markets like Romania and Bulgaria via Fashion Days.

Ingrid and Valerie dig into how Leogra makes multi-marketplace selling operational rather than overwhelming: a fixed six-month test phase for every new marketplace, automated pricing by SKU and country, and a data-first approach that treats every product as a number before it's a trend. They also get into what happens when a marketplace stops working – and why, for Daniel, exiting is just the next step in a process, not a crisis.

If you're scaling – or thinking about scaling – beyond your first few marketplaces, this episode is your checklist.

Note from the sponsor TikTok Shop:

Thinking about joining TikTok Shop but not sure where to start? Unlike many traditional marketplaces, TikTok Shop's account management team is genuinely easy to reach directly – so don't hesitate to ask them questions. If you'd rather read up first, the free TikTok Shop Seller Academy covers exactly what sellers ask most: how to register, what your first 30 days should look like, what to sell, and how to run your first live session without panicking. It also includes a Growth Center with seller missions, guidance on affiliate marketing, and practical tips on avoiding stockouts once orders pick up. Get started with TikTok Shop here: TikTok Shop Academy and Contact to theBusiness Development

Starting July 15, Amazon is requiring strict delivery standards from FBM sellers in five EU markets - 90% on-time delivery, one-day processing, or deactivation looms from September. The catch: Amazon doesn't always meet these same standards with its own FBA program. Valerie and Ingrid discuss in this news episode just how fair that really is toward sellers.

They also dig into why JD.com wants its marketplace JoyBuy to move away from the low-cost corner occupied by Temu and AliExpress, positioning itself instead as a credible, more Amazon-like alternative for brands. Whether that's enough to actually stand apart from Amazon itself is another question.

And there's more on the table, including MediaMarktSaturn's ambitious new marketplace target, Zalando's AI-powered digital product twins, and France's latest move against Shein. Plenty to get into for an episode that shows just how thin the line between growth and positioning has become.

Note about the Marketplace Universe Live Events:

Our Marketplace Universe Connect events are the go-to gathering for all Marketplace professionals in Europe - an evening filled with food, drinks, and new connections, because we believe that, at the end of the day, every business is a people business. Next, we’ll be hosting live events in Cologne and Munich. The events are free, but spots are very limited – apply here now to get on the guest list and join us! https://marketplace-universe.com/events/connect/

Is TikTok Shop an e-commerce channel or a marketing channel? Ask ten marketplace managers right now and you'll get ten different answers – and that confusion is exactly where this episode starts.

Ingrid and Valerie sit down with Max Burianek, Head of TikTok Shop Germany, who built the platform's UK business before bringing it to Germany. Germany is scaling faster than the UK did at the same stage after launch – driven by sellers leaning into content and creator collaboration from day one. The price tag has gone up too – commissions in Germany just rose from 5% to 7–9%. Particularly telling: enterprise brands like Philips are now pulling up to 70% of revenue from content formats – proof this isn't just a playground for social-native D2C brands anymore.

The real insight, though, is organizational. Burianek argues brands need to treat creators the way they've treated CRM for the last decade – he calls it "Creator Relationship Management." Where the team sits matters less than who leads it.

If you're still on the fence about TikTok Shop, or unsure who in your org should even own it – this one's for you.

When German e-commerce expert Stefan Wenzel took the stage of the K5 conference last week to show a satellite photo of the Atacama Desert — where unsold fashion goes to die — you could hear a pin drop.

His thesis: Sales-led commerce is broken, the numbers have proven it for years, and the industry has simply chosen not to look.

Ingrid and Valerie were there in the stage hall, and they have thoughts.

In this episode, we talk about the K5 theses that actually hurt: why endless growth targets have turned into margin pressure, dead stock and return chaos; why “Made in China” may no longer mean cheap copy, but faster, better and smarter; and why Europe should be very careful before confusing resignation with strategy.

We also ask whether authenticity is really the last human advantage in an AI-heavy commerce world — or just the next buzzword everyone will put into a LinkedIn post.

And then there is the topic that was glaringly missing from the big stage: recommerce. Second-hand, refurbished, circular models — one of the most European AND growing commerce stories out there. So why was everyone only talking about AI?

A sweaty, sharp and slightly uncomfortable debrief after Germany's most relevant e-commerce conference about broken growth logic, Chinese speed, European blind spots and the things the industry still prefers not to see.

Amazon lost 50% of its Czech e-commerce revenue. Not once — twice, in two consecutive years. That's the data point that triggered this conversation. But the more interesting story isn't Amazon's decline. It's what that decline reveals about a region that Western e-commerce still fundamentally misreads.

David Cikanek is a Prague-based marketplace expert who has spent years helping brands navigate Amazon and the broader CEE landscape. In this episode, he pushes back hard on one of the most persistent myths in European e-commerce: that Central and Eastern Europe is one market with one strategy. It isn't. The Czech Republic spends per capita are comparable to the Netherlands. Poland has Allegro — a genuine platform giant with 30%+ market share. Romania had eMAG, once called the Amazon of the East, now quietly retreating while a Turkish challenger backed by Chinese money closes in. Hungary is behind the rest of the region in terms of online penetration. These are not variations on a theme. They are different markets.

We also get into why Temu is winning the region while Shein is losing, why Kaufland's marketplace expansion raises more questions than it answers amongst the locals, and why TikTok Shop is more likely to be an upper-funnel discovery tool than a structural threat.

This episode is for anyone who has ever looked at CEE on a map and thought: same region, same playbook. Spoiler: it isn't.

📊 The CZ marketplace data chart referenced in this episode: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7470062455113691137/