For smaller businesses, international e-commerce once required considerable infrastructure. Entering another country could mean establishing new sales channels, managing localization, finding logistics partners, and adapting product information for another market.
Marketplaces have gradually lowered that barrier. New data from Temu suggests that European SMEs are taking advantage.
According to a survey conducted by the marketplace, 34% of European small businesses selling on Temu reported expanding into new international markets since joining the platform. Meanwhile, half reported increasing production or operational capacity, hiring additional employees, or doing both.
The findings offer another indication of how marketplaces are changing cross-border ecommerce for smaller European businesses.
Temu launched in Europe in 2023 and opened its marketplace to European sellers a year later. The company says it is now active in more than 90 markets, including every EU member state, while businesses from more than 35 markets can sell through the platform.
Interestingly, the sellers surveyed are not exclusively young businesses experimenting with e-commerce.
Around 43% had already been trading for more than ten years before joining Temu. Furthermore, 75% described the marketplace as either an important additional sales channel or their primary one.
That suggests marketplaces are not only lowering the barrier for new entrepreneurs. Established SMEs are also using them to add another route to customers without building every element of international e-commerce independently.
The survey itself is relatively small. Temu questioned 152 sellers from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom during June and July 2026. Because all respondents already sell on Temu and the research was conducted by the company, the results should not be treated as representative of European SMEs as a whole.
Still, they point to an interesting development in marketplace strategy.
Selling internationally traditionally required businesses to solve several problems at once.
A company needed visibility in the destination market, a way to process orders, appropriate logistics, customer support, and knowledge of local commercial requirements.
Large marketplaces can provide much of that infrastructure within an existing ecosystem.
Temu’s survey highlights the importance of simplicity for participating sellers. Around 38% valued the platform’s ease of use, while 35% highlighted its cost structure. Dedicated seller support was valued by 65%.
For a smaller company with limited e-commerce resources, reducing this operational complexity can make expansion into another country much more realistic.
However, reaching another market is only the first step.
When a business moves from one domestic channel to several international marketplaces, its product information needs to accompany it.
Titles, descriptions, technical specifications, images, identifiers, categories, measurements, and other attributes may need to be adapted for different languages and channel requirements. At the same time, the underlying product facts must remain consistent.
This is where cross-border growth can quickly create complexity.
A company selling 500 products in a single country manages a single commercial environment. Put the same catalog across several countries and marketplaces, and the number of product-content combinations grows rapidly.
For SMEs in particular, maintaining those variations manually can consume resources that would otherwise support international expansion.
This is relevant to Icecat’s role in the e-commerce ecosystem. Standardized product information provides brands and sellers with a reusable content foundation that can be syndicated across retailers, marketplaces, and international markets, rather than recreated separately for each destination.
Localization then becomes part of a scalable content process instead of an isolated task for each new country.
Temu is also changing its position in the European e-commerce ecosystem.
The platform became known primarily as a route for inexpensive products shipped from China to Western consumers. Opening the marketplace to European businesses introduces a new model in which the same infrastructure can help local sellers reach customers beyond their home markets.
This development comes as Temu and other international marketplaces face tighter regulation and changing import rules in Europe. Building a larger base of local merchants could therefore become increasingly important to their long-term European strategies.
For European SMEs, meanwhile, the attraction is clear. A marketplace can provide access to international demand without requiring a business to build a complete e-commerce operation in every new country.
But easier market access does not eliminate the need for scalable operations to support it.
As selling internationally becomes simpler, businesses need product content that can expand just as easily as their distribution.
The next barrier to cross-border ecommerce may therefore be less about finding a way into another market and more about ensuring that every product arrives there with the right information.
Read further: News, e-commerce, ecommerce, Icecat, product content, Temu
