The Shop Exchange: Buy.com Goes for $250 Million to Rakuten

After Zappos (post), SmartBargains/RueLaLa (post) and Net-a-porter (German post), this is the 4th biggest e-commerce aquisition within just a few months.

The Japanese online concern Rakuten has taken over the US online retailer Buy.com for $250 million (press release).

"In a move signaling an acceleration of its global expansion plans, Japan’s leading internet company, Rakuten, announced today that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Buy.com, a leading U.S. retail marketplace.


Combined, the two companies represent one of the world’s largest online retail marketplaces, offering consumers more than 60 million products from close to 35,000 merchants around the globe.

The acquisition, valued at approximately $250 million (USD), will be carried out by Rakuten’s U.S. subsidiary, Rakuten USA."

The press release illustrates the strategy as follows:

“As a company, Buy.com shares our vision for the future of ecommerce ‐ as a platform to give consumers the best value no matter their location, and to merge shopping with entertainment, and to help retailers build deep and lasting consumer relationships.”

Buy.com has in recent times repeatedly shown itself to be one of the most advanced and strategically far sighted of the top online merchants. With their estimated turnover of $690 million, they are number 32 of the InternetRetailer’s Top 500 list.

Buy.com had announced their launch in Germany last October.

More background on Rakuten on TechCrunch.

Related posts:

• GSI Grabs RueLaLa/SmartBargains for $350 Million
• Fed Up With Investors? - Zappos Moves To Amazon

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.