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Temu, Shein and AliExpress captured over 90% of EU outbound ecommerce spend in 2025, Austria launched a €2 parcel levy, and ChatGPT added try-on and wishlist features.
Temu, Shein and AliExpress now control nine in every ten euros Europeans spend abroad online — and ChatGPT just launched virtual try-on and wishlists, making it a direct rival to Google Shopping and Zalando.
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The Digital Commerce Daily is a concise briefing for ecommerce, retail media and digital commerce professionals, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
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Your 8-minute briefing on the platforms, players, and profits driving digital commerce today. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
Marco: Today's show has a lot going on — Chinese marketplaces, European tax policy, and ChatGPT trying on your clothes.
Klara: We're looking at just how dominant Temu, Shein, and AliExpress have become in cross-border spending, why Austria's new parcel levy is already causing a fight, and what OpenAI's new shopping features actually mean for product discovery.
Marco: Let's get into it.
Marco: Here's a number that should stop European brands in their tracks — nine out of every ten euros that European shoppers spend abroad online goes to three Chinese platforms.
Klara: To set the scene — cross-border ecommerce means buying from a shop based in another country. Europeans have been doing more of it every year, drawn by lower prices and wider choice. The assumption was always that this spend was spread across many sellers globally.
Marco: That assumption is wrong. New data shows that European consumers sent nearly 50 billion euros outside the EU through cross-border ecommerce in 2025. Over 90% of that went to Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. Not broadly spread — concentrated on three platforms from a single country. That is a structural lock on the market, and it's tightening, not loosening.
Klara: What makes this striking is the timing. The EU introduced parcel levies — extra charges on cheap imported goods — specifically to make this kind of shopping less attractive. There's been DSA enforcement too, which means stricter rules on what these platforms can do in Europe. And yet the numbers moved in the wrong direction. That tells you the price advantage and convenience these platforms offer is stronger than any regulatory friction so far.
Marco: For European brands, this reframes the threat completely. You're not competing against a handful of overseas rivals — you're competing against platforms with near-total dominance of the cross-border spending category. If your price point overlaps with what Temu or Shein sells, you need to be honest about whether price is even a battlefield you can win on.
Klara: I'd say there's still a real opening on trust, quality, and faster returns — things European consumers care about deeply. The numbers are brutal, but they don't mean the game is over.
Marco: Fair enough — but the clock is ticking. Now, our next story looks at a very different corner of the market.
Marco: Austria just introduced its own national tax on parcels — and the industry is not happy about it.
Klara: A bit of context here. Until now, parcel levies in Europe were largely an EU-wide conversation — a broad policy tool aimed at making cheap imported goods less competitive. Austria has now gone its own way, introducing a national charge independently of whatever Brussels is doing.
Marco: The detail: from today, the first of October 2026, Austria is charging two euros per parcel on large online sellers and marketplaces operating in the country. That applies to both retailers with their own online stores and the big platforms. Industry groups have pushed back hard — they say it raises costs for consumers, and that domestic Austrian retailers end up worse off because foreign sellers who don't comply simply absorb the friction or ignore it.
Klara: That last point is the one I keep coming back to. The compliance problem is real. If you're a well-run European brand or marketplace that plays by the rules, you add two euros per parcel and your prices go up. If a non-compliant seller from outside the EU doesn't follow the rules — which we know happens — they don't carry that cost. So the levy, in practice, might punish the honest operators more than the ones it was designed to target.
Marco: I'd frame it slightly differently though. The bigger issue for businesses right now is fragmentation. Austria moves independently, Germany might do something similar next quarter, France its own version after that. Suddenly your logistics cost model for the DACH region — that's Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — looks completely different country by country. That operational complexity is its own cost, even before you count the levy itself.
Klara: And that complexity falls hardest on mid-sized brands without a dedicated regulatory team.
Marco: Exactly the ones who can least afford it. Now — our third story today takes us in a different direction entirely.
Marco: OpenAI just shipped two new shopping features inside ChatGPT — and they change what the tool actually is.
Klara: For years, ChatGPT has been a research tool. You could ask it about products, get recommendations, compare options. But when you were ready to buy, you still had to go somewhere else — Google Shopping, a retailer's website, Instagram. The discovery and the purchase lived in different places.
Marco: That gap is now closing. ChatGPT has rolled out a virtual try-on feature — you upload a photo of yourself, and the tool shows you how a clothing item would actually look on your body before you buy it. Alongside that, there's a new wishlist function, so products you find through a ChatGPT conversation can be saved and revisited later. That is a complete top-of-funnel commerce surface — meaning ChatGPT is now doing the job that Google Shopping, Pinterest, and brand apps have been competing for.
Klara: The try-on piece is the one I'd focus on for fashion brands. Fit uncertainty is one of the biggest reasons people abandon purchases or return items — and European return rates are already a serious cost problem. If ChatGPT can reduce that friction at the point of discovery, shoppers might start their search there rather than on Zalando or a brand's own site.
Marco: And that's where I think the stakes get really uncomfortable for brands. The wishlist feature is clever, but the deeper question is — who owns that customer relationship now? If someone discovers your jacket inside ChatGPT, saves it, and then clicks through to buy, OpenAI sat between you and your customer at the most important moment. Brands have spent years building direct relationships through their own apps and newsletters. This inserts a new middleman right at the start of the journey.
Klara: Though I'd argue some brands will welcome it. Smaller fashion labels that can't compete for Google Shopping ad space might actually get more visibility through AI recommendations than they ever did through paid search.
Marco: That's a real upside — but it comes with zero guarantee of consistency. An algorithm decides who gets recommended. Today it's you, tomorrow it might not be. At least with paid search, you control the spend. With ChatGPT discovery, you're entirely at OpenAI's discretion. For European fashion brands especially, the move to audit where your product discovery actually comes from — and what you'd do if that source shifted — has never been more urgent.
Marco: The single biggest thing today — Chinese platforms aren't just winning cross-border ecommerce in Europe, they're almost the entire market.
Klara: So the question worth sitting with is this: if you're a European brand or retailer, where exactly does a customer encounter you before they encounter Temu?