20-21_Cardsharp.qxp_Layout 1 06/04/2025 13:48 Page 1
cardsharp
Here Today, Gone Temu-rrow?
Inset: Temu has a battle on its hands to get the card industry’s trust.
Not surprisingly given the audience at the Temu presentation in the ‘greeting card hall’ of the Spring Fair, the Temu presenter was lambasted by a stream of publishers, who had been ripped off by Chinese-based traders on the site. The copying of publishers’ designs is so blatant in most cases (just scans of images taken from bonafide websites) and the ridiculously low prices that these scammers charge for the rip offs are scarcely believable. And it has not been confined to a handful of publishers as countless card companies, large and small, have been subject to this blatant copying by this Chinese platform. The Temu guy presenting was faintly apologetic, saying it would respond to any copying issues highlighted by publishers by taking the offending products off the site. But it was pointed out that it should not be a publisher’s responsibility to constantly monitor the Temu site especially as no sooner had the copies been removed, they appeared again on Temu, supposedly from another Chinese-based seller. As Amanda Fergusson, ceo of the GCA stridently Below: There are thousands of cut price cards on the Temu site, the majority of which are copies.
20 PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
pointed out on behalf of members at the meeting, that trying to monitor Temu was “like a game of Wacka-Mole”, and that Temu, as termed by Emma Ball are in effect “Time Thieves”. Temu’s Thomas suggested that publishers should join the Temu ‘community’ and that would make give easier access to take down copying defenders, to which one publisher pointed out, “You want us to become one of the gang of thieves to catch the thieves!” Furthermore, there was no financial compensation available from Temu for transgressions. He also had no answer to the allegations of forced labour by Uyghur Muslims from factories based in Western China, used by some of the sellers on the site? Or to the amount of tax Temu pays in the UK? The answer being none, as the company’s UK head office seems to be a largely deserted office in Dublin
Two months ago, in the greeting card hall at Spring Fair, Cardsharp was among the audience of many card publishers attending a presentation and question and answer session by the Chinese online platform Temu. Thomas Wintle, an e-commerce hipster representing Temu was attempting to persuade retailers and traders to sign up as its partners. He was however somewhat ill-prepared for the tsunami of adverse reactions he received, due to the widespread blatant copying on its platform. Left: Copying and plagiarism needs to stop in the industry. Below: The Temu presentation in action at the recent Spring Fair.
but registered, funnily enough, in the secretive tax haven of the Cayman Islands. Nor did he have any answers to the point that many of the products on sale on the platform do not conform to many governments’ health and safety standards or have any meaningful response to the environmental damage being done by the transfer of thousands of little parcels to Europe and the USA by air freight to individual addresses. The feeble riposte was: “Come and talk to us and join us and we can work on these issues together”.