Kakaku.com started from a website which lists the retail prices of Akihabara, the Japanese electric market. It quickly became a famous site which shows the best deals of electrical products.
Their revenue sources are through affiliate and advertisement. Now Kakaku.com is not specialized in electric products. Their business was expanded into travel, insuarance, and foreign currency trade.
A founder of Kakaku.com is not a famous person. Mitsuaki Makino created Kakaku.com in 1997 and made the site profitable, then quietly retired from CEO in 2002. Yoshiteru Akita took the position of CEO and successfully grew Kakaku.com into a public company.
In 2005, Kakaku.com was cracked and customers’ email addresses were leaked. The site was closed for ten days. The company’s awful explanation upset their customers.
Here is the English version of the financial statement. It’s worth a look.
See Also (in English)
Kakaku.com (as of 2007)
- Type: public (Tokyo: 2371)
- Founded: 1997
- Public: Oct 2003
- Page views: 427 million per month
- Sales: 4.8 billion yen ($41 million)
- Profit: 1.3 billion yen ($11 million)
- Employee: 110
- People: Founder, Mitsuaki Makino
- People: ex CEO, Yoshiteru Akita
- People: CEO, Minoru Tanaka
Shunichi Arai