Kakaku.com: a price comparison company
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
Author Information Shunichi Arai is developing a product for his new stealth startup. Arai devotes his life to software business, reading, and salsa dancing. Arai also loves to learn other cultures and languages such as Korean. 4 Responses to “Kakaku.com: a price comparison company”
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■Drecom: next scandal or …? （ドリコム） ■Mobage town – a mobile social network for teens （DeNA） ■Rakuten: online shopping monopoly （楽天） ■Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes （ハテナ）■Kakaku.com: a price comparison company（カカク・コム） こ う見ると、ほんと誰でも知っているようなドメジャーなサービスばかり。ただ、あくまで日本（もしくはアジア諸国）発の優れたサービス、という観点から紹介
■Drecom: next scandal or …?（ドリコム） ■Mobage town – a mobile social network for teens（DeNA） ■Rakuten: online shopping monopoly（楽天） ■Hatena: a web company with geekish tastes（ハテナ）■Kakaku.com: a price comparison company（カカク・コム）
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[...] a long time and large range of suspention is since Kakaku.com’s case as far as I remember, which was an entire service suspention of the popuar [...]