Does Rakuten Germany (formerly Tradoria) have a chance to beat out Amazon.de within 5 years?
Rakuten’s global CEO Hiroshi Mikitani likes to speak of the synergies between its international subsidiaries. In Germany we will soon see one of the first examples: Buy.com, the American online retailer acquired by Rakuten in 2010, will this month give a boost to Rakuten Germany’s product sprectrum (German link):
<translated> “Buy.com will be appearing on Rakuten.de as a merchant and will above all extend the spectrum of IT and consumer electronics offered. According to Rakuten Deutschland CEO Tobias Kobier, ‘Electronics are simply a huge traffic driver and with Buy.com, which is a competitor of Amazon in the US, we can be sure that we can also be very competitive in this field.’”
Buy.com has been represented in Germany since the end of 2009 with its own online shop. As in the US, the company has decided against building up own large scale logistics and warehousing capabilities but rather are working with distribution partners. This is a strategy which Buy.com plans to keep in place for the sales arising via Rakuten.de: “The goods are exclusively handled by German wholesalers”, according to a speaker for Rakuten Germany.
Another idiosyncratic solution was selected by Buy.com at the beginning of 2011 for its presence on the Japanese Rakuten platform: With the “Easy International Forwarding” service, all products from Buy.com as well as from the third party retailers on the site could be shipped to Japan without any additional costs.
Related posts:
- Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani in DLD Video Interview
- How Rakuten wants to overtake Amazon.de with Tradoria
- Rakuten’s Global Expansion Continues, Tradoria Rebranding
- Rakuten: Japanese E-commerce Giant Continues Expansion with Play.com of the UK
- Rakuten/Buy.com Using Tradoria To Spearhead Into Germany
- Rakuten On Their Expansion Plans with Buy.com and Priceminister
- Buy.com Goes for $250 Million to Rakuten
Originally posted in German by Matthias Hell, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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