Rakuten: online shopping monopoly
Rakuten is a giant. Rakuten group has an Internet shopping mall ‘Rakuten‘, a hotel reservation site ‘Rakuten Travel’, ‘Rakuten Securities’, ‘Rakuten Credit Card’ and so on. Rakuten has $1.72 billion annual sales.
The mall and the travel agent has the biggest share of their markets like Amazon did on the book market.
Mikitani started his business as a normal Internet shopping mall. His strong selling team made Rakuten adopted by many small and medium sized companies.
Rakuten travel is the most popular Internet hotel reservation service in Japan. It was formerly called Tabimado and owned by a ship building company ‘Hitachi Zosen‘. Tabimado made a huge success of it. Rakuten bought the service in 2003 with 32.3 billion yen ($276 million) and changed its name.
Before starting Rakuten, Mikitani was working for a big bank, and has a Harvard MBA. Now he owns a baseball team and a soccer team. Very very Establishment, isn’t he?
See also (in English):
Rakuten:
- Type: public (JP:4755)
- Founded: 1997 Feb. 7
- Went Public: 2000 Apr. 19
- Users: 37.2 million
- Sales: 203 billion yen ($1.72 billion)
- Profit: 30 billion yen ($255 million)
- Employee: 3200+
- People: CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani (born 1965)
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. 7 Responses to “Rakuten: online shopping monopoly”
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■Niconico douga （ニコニコ動画(RC2)） ■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
■Niconico douga（ニコニコ動画(RC2)） ■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）
shopping cart approach. This means users can put i.e. a BluRay disc, diet pills and shoes into one basket from different shops and pay in one sum. All services are being offered under the “Rakuten” brand. So no wonder that some people even speak of anonline shopping monopolywhen talking about the company. IV) Business Model Rakuten’s business model is quite simple: Make money through lots and lots of services covering lots and lots of industry sectors. For example, approximately 60,000 shops are currently registered on
shopping cart approach. This means users can put i.e. a BluRay disc, diet pills and shoes into one basket from different shops and pay in one sum. All services are being offered under the “Rakuten” brand. So no wonder that some people even speak of anonline shopping monopolywhen talking about the company. IV) Business Model Rakuten’s business model is quite simple: Make money through lots and lots of services covering lots and lots of industry sectors. For example, approximately 60,000 shops are currently registered on
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