Rakuten Subsidizes French No.1 E-Commerce Company PriceMinister

Rakuten has just announced [J, pdf] that they bought 100% of French E-commerce company PriceMinister S.A. The purchase is planned to done in July 2010 for 200 million Euro (22.5 billion yen). Rakuten established their European branch S.a.r.l. in Luxembourg in 2008. That company will handle this acquisition. Rakuten has been actively adding its oversea… Continue reading Rakuten Subsidizes French No.1 E-Commerce Company PriceMinister

Amazon Envy II: Rakuten now wants to produce hardware (a barcode scanner)

Another case of Amazon envy from Rakuten, Japan’s biggest online shopping “mall”? It seems so. According to various reports, Rakuten is currently pondering the development of a barcode scanner. One of the reason for Rakuten to get into the hardware business – according to a company representative quoted by The Nikkei (“Japan’s Wall Street Journal”)… Continue reading Amazon Envy II: Rakuten now wants to produce hardware (a barcode scanner)

Amazon Envy: Rakuten Builds Own Distribution Centers

Big shake-up in Japan’s $70 billion e-commerce market: Rakuten, Japan’s leading virtual mall (over 30,000 merchants, over 50 million customer accounts), is about to launch an attack against its biggest (yet indirect) rival), Amazon Japan. The biggest difference between the two sites is that Rakuten is a B2B2C platform without a warehousing function. But that’s… Continue reading Amazon Envy: Rakuten Builds Own Distribution Centers

Japan’s Index Corp. To Launch (Apparently Gigantic) Virtual Mall In China

Tokyo-based (and JASDAQ-listed) Index Corp. has decided to shake hands with Chinese retail giant Hualian to launch and run a large virtual shopping mall. Somehow surprisingly, Index, a leading mobile contents provider, will develop the site for China’s fixed web and not the country’s rapidly growing mobile web. The main idea is to offer an… Continue reading Japan’s Index Corp. To Launch (Apparently Gigantic) Virtual Mall In China

Amazon Japan’s Counterattacks To Rakuten Books

Amazon Japan v.s. Japan’s local Rakuten battle was recently well covered on TechCrunch (by our buddy Serkan Toto, of course). Amazon is doing pretty good localization on their main part, books, but draining duel against Rakuten in many shopping categories. Amazon Japan’s shipping fee 300 yen (3.3 USD) has been waived if a customer purchases… Continue reading Amazon Japan’s Counterattacks To Rakuten Books

New Law Approved To Permit Nonbank Remittance And To Accelerate E-Commerce Deals

New legislation (its proposal draft[J]), which allows nonbanks to deal with payments and money transfers, was approved by the Lower House of Japan today.   It will accelerate competition in reducing remittance charges among banks and potential service agents in this market. In order to protect consumers from damages caused by possible bankruptcies of remittance agents,… Continue reading New Law Approved To Permit Nonbank Remittance And To Accelerate E-Commerce Deals

Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

Today, two online pharmacy stores Kenko.com and Wellnet had a press conference to announce that they had filed a lawsuit against Japanese government. They claims that the ban of online and postal drug sale, which is going to be effective from June 1st, is against the constitution. After we reported Rakuten, Kenko.com and others claimed… Continue reading Kenko.com and Wellnet Sues Japanese Government around Drug e-Commerce Ban

Japanese No.1 E-Commerce site “Rakuten” started multilingual item search

Rakuten, the largest E-Commerce player in Japan, has started a multilingual item search service in Rakuten Ichiba, the biggest Japanese online shopping mall. Rakuten Ichiba top page[J] / Rakuten Ichiba top page[E] The sales of Rakuten’s E-Commerce division for the year ’07 was 75.5 billion yen( about 800 million US dollars). Rakuten launched E-Commerce service… Continue reading Japanese No.1 E-Commerce site “Rakuten” started multilingual item search

Japan is going to ban online non-prescription drug sales

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) has announced a plan to ban online sales of non-prescription drugs. The MHLW is planning to issue an Ordinance of the Ministry to ban online drug sales by June 2009. In Japan, the online drug market has overall annual sales of 111 billion yen (1 billion… Continue reading Japan is going to ban online non-prescription drug sales

Tokyo2point0 event: Venture Capital in Japan and blogging/Ecommerce platform LIMS

This month’s Tokyo2point0 event drew a huge crowd this week on Tuesday. Again, two presentations were held between and before networking sessions. Venture Capital for Tech Startups My friend Aki Ohashi from ngi capital, the investment arm of ngi group (an investor in and operator of -mostly Asian- Tech companies) spoke about the current state… Continue reading Tokyo2point0 event: Venture Capital in Japan and blogging/Ecommerce platform LIMS