Rakuten’s US market shutters
The U.S. arm of Rakuten Market, previously Purchase.com, will shut down this yr, the corporate advised Digital Commerce 360.
{The marketplace} is owned by Japanese market operator and ecommerce firm Rakuten Inc. Clients can place orders on Rakuten.com/store till Sept. 15, the corporate says. Its rebate and cash-back enterprise known as Rakuten Rewards, previously Ebates, is staying open.
“We’ve got determined to sundown the U.S. Rakuten Market (Rakuten.com/store),” a Rakuten spokeswoman says. “We made a number of adjustments in our U.S. enterprise to strengthen our efforts in areas the place we now have a major aggressive benefit and the best alternative for continued development, which embody our thriving Money Again rewards, promoting and digital content material enterprise.”
Rakuten Inc. owns a lot of international retail websites, most notably Rakuten Ichiba, a Japanese market that bought greater than $35 billion value of merchandise on its web site in 2019, Digital Commerce 360 estimates. Rakuten (together with its U.S. operations) is ranked No. 10 within the Digital Commerce 360 On-line Marketplaces database.
Rakuten Inc. bought on-line normal merchandise retailer Purchase.com for $250 million in Could 2010. On the time, Purchase.com was No. 32 within the Digital Commerce 360 High 500 rating of the biggest North American on-line retailers. Purchase.com bought on to shoppers and operated a market that accounted for 46% of its enterprise on the time of its acquisition.
Rakuten Inc. acquired Purchase.com as a part of its technique to develop past Japan and, particularly, to achieve market share within the U.S. and compete with ecommerce leaders Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. “On Amazon and eBay, you are feeling such as you’re simply itemizing your merchandise on their market,” mentioned Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten founder, chairman and CEO, in an interview with Digital Commerce 360 in 2010. “We share the client with our retailers,” Mikitani mentioned in 2010.
In 2013, Rakuten Inc. rebranded Purchase.com to Rakuten Procuring, redirected the Purchase.com web site to Rakuten.com and transformed it to a pure market (the place all of its merchandise had been bought by third-party retailers) from a market and retail hybrid like Amazon.
Rakuten says it doesn’t disclose what number of U.S. retailers are at the moment promoting on its market, however 1.5% of Digital Commerce 360 High 1000 retailers promote on the U.S. Rakuten Market in 2020. Comparatively, 42.7% promote on Amazon and 18.2% promote on eBay.
Rakuten Inc. bought U.S. rebates web site Ebates Inc. for $1 billion in 2014. Ebates, now known as Rakuten Rewards on Rakuten.com, presents offers and money rewards for shoppers who store with the corporate’s 3,500 retail companions, together with Macy’s Inc. (No. 15 within the High 1000) and Kohl’s Corp. (No. 21).
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