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01 - The Brief
Shein and Temu's German sales jumped 57% in a single year
According to the German Retail Federation's (HDE) Online Monitor 2026, Shein and Temu together generated roughly €4.7 billion in German ecommerce sales, up from €3.0 billion in 2024. That's about 5% of Germany's entire €92.3 billion online retail market, and the platforms now deliver an estimated 460,000 parcels to German households every single day.
The growth isn't coming from new customers, it's coming from bigger orders
The number of German buyers on these platforms rose only modestly, from 14.4 million to 16.0 million. What actually drove the 57% jump was average order value climbing from €24.95 to €34.15. Existing customers are simply buying more per order than they were a year ago.
Austria and Switzerland show the same pattern, at different intensities
In Austria, Temu, Shein and AliExpress combined now account for 10.6% of all ecommerce spending, an estimated €1.3 billion this year, though Amazon still holds a considerably larger share of the market overall. In Switzerland, where online sales grew 6% to around €17.1 billion, foreign retailers including Chinese marketplaces continue gaining share, according to NielsenIQ, though the pace of that cross-border growth has slowed compared with the previous year.
02 — The Deep Dive
What's actually driving Chinese marketplace growth in DACH, and what it signals about where this goes next
We've covered the regulatory side of Shein and Temu's EU expansion before, the customs duty change, the EU-warehouse workaround, the ongoing scrutiny from Brussels. This issue is about something different: what the latest retail federation data actually shows about how these platforms are growing right now, and it's a more specific story than "Chinese marketplaces are taking over."
The order value story is the real headline
The most telling detail in HDE's Online Monitor 2026 isn't the €4.7 billion total, it's how that number was reached. German buyer count on Temu and Shein grew only from 14.4 to 16.0 million, an 11% increase. But total sales grew 57%. The gap between those two numbers is entirely explained by order value, which rose from €24.95 to €34.15 per order, a 37% increase on its own.
That's a meaningfully different growth story than "more people are discovering these platforms." It's existing customers trusting them with bigger baskets. For sellers watching this as a competitive signal, it suggests these platforms have moved past the pure novelty, impulse-buy phase in Germany and are becoming a more habitual, higher-consideration shopping destination for the people who already use them.
Austria shows the ceiling this could reach
Austria is worth watching specifically because it may be a preview of where Germany is headed. Chinese marketplaces already account for 10.6% of all Austrian ecommerce spending, more than double their German share. The Austrian Retail Association's own framing is direct: 47% of all Austrian ecommerce spending, €5.8 billion, already flows to foreign retailers generally, and Chinese platforms are a growing share of that outflow. If Germany's trajectory continues, Austria's current numbers may be a rough preview of where German market share heads over the next year or two.
Switzerland is the outlier, and the reason is structural
Switzerland's pattern is different, not because Chinese marketplaces aren't growing there too, NielsenIQ confirms they are, but because Switzerland sits outside the EU customs union entirely, uses its own currency, and has its own established local ecommerce leader in Digitec Galaxus, which recently overtook Zalando as the country's largest online retailer. That local strength, combined with different import rules, appears to be slowing the pace of cross-border share gains compared with Germany and Austria, even as the overall direction is the same.
Buyer count grew 11%. Sales grew 57%. The difference is entirely in how much each existing customer is now willing to spend per order, not how many new customers showed up.
The retail federation's contested framing
It's worth being clear about where the data is neutral and where it isn't. The sales and order-value figures come from HDE's Online Monitor, a widely cited annual benchmark. Separately, HDE has also commissioned research, via IW Consult, estimating that Temu and Shein cost the German economy €2.4 billion annually in lost value-added and contribute to roughly 40,000 job losses. That study surveyed 4,000 German consumers and found 51% of Temu and Shein buyers said they would have bought the same products elsewhere at the same price if those platforms didn't exist. That's a genuine data point, but it comes from HDE, which represents German retailers competing directly with these platforms, so it should be read as an advocacy-adjacent estimate rather than neutral third-party research. Shein has publicly disputed the framing, calling it part of a pattern of "scapegoating peers" rather than a genuine strategy to help domestic retailers compete.
What this means if you sell into DACH
Whether you compete directly with these platforms or simply sell into the same markets, the order-value trend is the part worth internalizing. It suggests German, Austrian, and increasingly Swiss consumers are becoming more comfortable making larger purchases on Chinese marketplaces than they were even a year ago, which narrows the price and trust gap that used to separate them from established European retailers. For smaller sellers, competing purely on price against platforms with this kind of momentum is a harder game than it was twelve months ago. Competing on trust, service, and specificity, the things a large, generalist marketplace structurally can't offer, remains the more durable path.
Action plan, if you sell into Germany, Austria or Switzerland
Don't assume Chinese marketplace competition is only a price story. Rising order values suggest growing trust, not just growing discount-seeking. Your differentiation strategy should account for both.
Watch Austria as a leading indicator. If Germany's Chinese marketplace share is trending toward Austria's current 10.6%, plan your competitive positioning with that ceiling in mind, not today's 5%.
If you sell into Switzerland, study Digitec Galaxus specifically. A strong, trusted local incumbent appears to be slowing cross-border share gains there. Understanding why it retains loyalty is more useful than assuming the DACH pattern is uniform.
Treat HDE's economic-impact figures as one side's advocacy data. The €2.4 billion and 40,000 jobs figures are genuine research, but commissioned by an interested party. Useful context, not neutral fact.
Revisit your own average order value. If competitors are growing basket size rather than customer count, it may be worth testing bundling, thresholds, or incentives that push your own average order value up rather than only chasing new traffic.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute business or legal advice. Market share and revenue estimates vary by source and methodology. Figures attributed to HDE and IW Consult reflect their own published research and should be evaluated alongside other sources.
03 — The Stack
HDE Online Monitor 2026
Given this week's topic, the Stack covers the source report itself rather than a software tool, since it's freely available and worth reading directly.
Free to access ✓Germany-specific ✓Annual benchmark ✓Marketplace breakdowns ✓Published in German ✓
The HDE Online Monitor is one of the most cited annual benchmarks for German ecommerce, covering marketplace share, category performance, and now increasingly the competitive impact of Chinese platforms. If you sell into Germany specifically, it's worth reading the source data directly rather than only secondhand summaries, since it also breaks out category-level and channel-level detail beyond what any single newsletter issue can cover.
The one limitation worth noting: the report is published in German, and it's produced by the retail federation representing the very businesses competing with the marketplaces it evaluates. Useful primary data, but read the interpretive framing with that in mind.
Not a sponsored placement. No affiliate relationship.
04 — The Number
460,000
The number of parcels Shein and Temu are estimated to deliver to German households every single day, according to the German Retail Federation (HDE).
Source: HDE Online Monitor 2026 and IW Consult study for HDE, as reported by Lengow and Ecommerce News Europe, 2026
That's not a number about market share or revenue, it's a number about physical volume moving through Germany's parcel and customs infrastructure every day, from two platforms alone. It's the same underlying pressure behind the EU's new customs duty and DHL's own struggles to adapt its systems in time, this newsletter's last two issues on the topic. The market share data and the operational strain are the same story, told from two different angles.
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