Ah, the 1980s! Christmas shopping was fun. You would save up your pocket money, walk up to the shopping centre (We were the first town to have an American-style Shopping Mall/Centre in the UK). We would go to a few shops: Woolworths for the presents, Superdrug for the 99p cards to give out to friends in school, and then usually NSS for a toy for ourselves.

As we got older and the 90s arrived, we discovered the German markets. This was a lovely experience. We had hand-made toys, food from another country, and, if we were lucky, some mulled wine with fruit.

So fast forward to 2025:

Shein and Temu are raking in about 3.3 billion euros in Germany, and one in five Germans is planning to hit up these Chinese platforms for Christmas shopping.

This is according to the German Retail Federation (HDE), and their director Stefan Genth has the perfect word for it: “paradoxical.”

When most of the online shoppers (AOV) are in their 40s to 50s, we certainly remember the difference between online and offline shopping. Of course, times have changed; very few children, even in my generation, want a hand-painted wooden train.

But again, this comes down to the relevance of convenience. 20% of all Christmas orders in Germany are going to come from Temu & Shein—Chinese marketing platforms. Is this a good thing? Or do the EU producers of goods need to step up to counter delivery times and pricing?

HDE president Alexander von Preen admits it’s an estimate, but he’s confident they’ve nailed the scale. And here’s the kicker: “The trend is strongly upward.”

It gets bigger when you zoom out. That 3.3 billion doesn’t even include AliExpress, which is also growing across Europe. And just for perspective, Amazon (which HDE doesn’t count as a non-EU retailer) pulled in over 52 billion euros in Germany last year, according to retail institute EHI.

Overall, German e-commerce is expected to grow 4% this year to hit 92.4 billion euros in sales. Shein and Temu together? They’re sitting at 3–4% of that entire market.

Not bad for platforms that can’t seem to get their products to pass basic safety tests!