Empowering Merchants

Ta ble o f Co n t e n t s
The Story of Rakuten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.
Reaching Our Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.
Letter from Mickey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.
Tamagoya-San . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.
Yonayona no Sato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
iDog/iCat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Bene Bene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Fabric Plus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Power DJ’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Silver Bullet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Taketora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Vanilla Beans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Yumetenbo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Our Marketplaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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1
Th e Story of Rak ut e n
Rakuten Group
Founder: Hiroshi Mikitani
Opening: 1997
Number of Employees: 10,000+
Number of Stores: 40,000+
Rakuten Ichiba exceeds
37,000
stores
motenashi
In February 1997
Rakuten launched their
original online shopping mall
Rakuten Ichiba with a team of
just 5 employees and only 13
merchants
Whereas other marketplaces
may compete directly with
sellers, Rakuten’s model
seeks to empower merchants
to deliver Omotenashi,
a Japanese high service
mindset, which helps sellers
create lasting relationships
with customers
The
now manages around
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1999
40 different
busineses and
services
Super Points
Rakuten Travel
starts with an online hotel
reservation service
Rakuten Ichiba now
houses over 1,800
merchants
1997
Rakuten Group
and Rakuten becomes
Japan’s largest internet
services company
2001
loyalty program is
introduced
All products sold on
Rakuten Ichiba generate
Super Points that can be
used to pay for shopping
in any merchant’s store
2002
Tohoku Rakuten
Golden Eagles
to expand its business
and services globally,
currently active in
19
countries
&regions,
with over
Around 80% of
internet users in
Japan are members
of Rakuten Ichiba
Rakuten enters the area
of professional sports
with the creation of the
The Rakuten
Group continues
10,000
employees
worldwide
baseball team in Japan
2004
2008
2010
2012
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Brazil
Malaysia
Indonesia
Investing in emerging online
services around the world
R each ing Our Poten ti a l
With a Global
Business Platform
The Rakuten Group is accelerating overseas growth
taking the know-how from each country and building
synergy under a global management platform
UK
Shopping mall business
Travel business
Performance marketing business
Rakuten Institute of Technology
Development center
Digital goods
Rakuten
head office,
Japan
Jacinto Roca,
Founder & CEO
Wuaki.tv
Canada
Michael Serbinis,
CEO, Kobo Inc.
Germany
Americas
France
Europe
Asia
United States
Thailand
Taiwan
Brazil
Malaysia
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Indonesia
Shopping mall business
Travel business
Performance marketing business
As a part of Rakuten, Kobo will accelerate
their international growth, bringing new
products, a leading eReading experience
and one of the largest world class
content catalogues to passionate readers
everywhere. On July 2012, Kobo launched
the award winning Kobo Touch eReader
and it’s full eReading service in Japan.
The eReader is sold through Rakuten’s
online shopping mall, Rakuten Ichiba and
Rakuten Books, as well as through other
electronics retailers.
Rakuten Shugi as
a single flag for
different European
cultures
Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet
CEO, PriceMinister S.A.S.
United States
Spain
In the same way that shopping has moved
online, an increasing amount of consumers
are turning to online services over traditional
TV and rental options. Being part of the
Rakuten global network allows us to expand
the successful Wuaki.tv offering, both in
terms of services and geographical reach.
Everything points to this being a huge growth
area over the coming years—particularly
when looking at media consumption via
mobile connected devices and eReaders,
like Kobo.
Europe’s consumer life is becoming more and more centered around
the digital economy. But Europe has many distinct local cultural
habits, languages, taxes and legal environments, which we have to
accommodate. The confidence in e-businesses, delivery systems and
payment preferences also varies widely across Europe. I think that one
single Rakuten brand and some shared principles, like Rakuten Shugi,
will help the Rakuten Group to build a truly No. 1 e-commerce group
in Europe. When we apply the Rakuten vision of “Empowerment”
everywhere in Europe, it will powerfully unify Rakuten, our merchants
and consumers under the same red and white win-win flag.
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Let t er from Mick e y
Empowering Merchants
“Conventional
wisdom about
the relationship
between seller
and marketplace
has become
irrelevant.”
Merchants are the lifeblood of our business. In order to evolve and continue to prosper it is essential that our merchants
are empowered to make the very most of the channel to build their brands and customer relationships.
Rakuten works closely alongside its merchants to consistently deliver “Omotenashi” (Japanese service mindset)
experiences to its customers. The aim is for all Rakuten merchants to be able to go above and beyond what is expected
to offer truly exceptional and memorable customer experiences.
In Japan, this has helped to reinvigorate small businesses that needed more customers, helped entrepreneurs grow
small businesses into major enterprises and made conventional wisdom about the relationship between seller and
marketplace irrelevant.
Here are some of their stories, which I hope you enjoy.
Hiroshi Mikitani
Chairman and CEO
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Rei Kimura
Oohara Farm Association
Ta m agoya- SAN
A Surprising
Hit
“Eggs?! On the Internet?” Nagano farmer Rei Kimura quickly
got used to that reaction when he hatched his Rakuten egg
store, Tamagoya-San, at the end of the 1990s.
Launched in 1997 Tamagoya-San was one of the very first
shops to start trading on Rakuten Ichiba and eggs proved a
surprising hit.
Kimura had recently moved back to the countryside from
Tokyo. He was interested in the Internet and wanted to use it
to help the family business. Kimura quickly discovered that
“All we have are eggs.”
online customers were willing to pay extra for quality.
Ending their relationship with their wholesale customers was
a difficult decision. But selling directly to consumers via the
web brought much higher margins. It effectively saved the
business. “Without the internet, we probably would have had
to give up,” says Kimura.
To provide the quality that online customers seek, Tamagoya-San
uses its own special recipe feed and the chickens are
antibiotic free. Freshness is a big selling point. The eggs are
dispatched the day they are laid, to arrive the next.
The eggs cost several times ordinary supermarket prices, but
850 customers have eggs delivered regularly and many more
make occasional purchases. Most customers eat the eggs
raw on rice, a Japanese specialty.
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On a Saturday or Sunday as many as 30 people visit the farm
shop—a surprising number considering how out of the way
Tamagoya-San is. But many now know about the shop
from Rakuten.
“It’s amazing. All we have are eggs,” jokes Kimura.
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Naoyuki Ide
President of YOHO
Brewing Company
Yo nayo na no Sato
The Craft of
Selling Beer
Yonayona no Sato is one of the oldest businesses on
Rakuten Ichiba, having set up the year of the marketplace’s
birth, 1997. The late 1990s was also the beginning of the
Japanese microbrewery boom and the Nagano-based craft
ale specialists soon enjoyed healthy sales across Japan.
But by the mid-2000s, with the boom subsiding, the number
of microbreweries across Japan had dropped dramatically,
and so had Yonayona’s sales. What saved the company, says
“We actually have more people
working on the website than
salespeople.”
CEO Naoyuki Ide, was their enthusiastic online following.
“What I realized is that this is a service business as well,”
he says. “We make beer but we serve our customers fun with
it.” That fun includes blogs, photos, special offers and other
content on the Yonayona site. “We actually have more people
working on the site than salespeople,” says Ide.
These days 30% of Yonayona sales are online. Not just that,
online sales have also influenced retail sales. Ide says that is
because customers often pester their local supermarket to
stock Yonayona after seeing it online.
But no doubt it’s also due to Ide’s infectious enthusiasm for
microbrewing, not to mention his somewhat larger than life
personality. It’s not unknown for him to wear a costume to
Rakuten events; attendees at one awards ceremony were
surprised to meet a shiny gold Yonayona robot.
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One special campaign featured a competition for a case of
beer specially delivered by Ide to the lucky winner. The results
entertainingly documented online: journey, delivery and
impromptu drinking session.
“When we make beer at Yonayona we are very serious,” says
Ide, “but when we sell it we have fun.”
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Nami Hasegawa
Director, Zephyr Co., LTD.
i D o g/ i Cat
Well-dressed
Pets
Zephyr was founded in 1989 as a subcontractor making
children’s clothes and sports apparel. But in the early 2000s,
with business moving to China, it switched to clothes for a
quite different kind of customer.
Nami Hasegawa was working at a web-design company in
Nagoya when her mother Etsuko, President of Zephyr, asked
her for advice about making clothes for pets.
“It’s all about customers’
love for their pets.”
Hasegawa saw the advantage in setting up iDog via Rakuten,
which meant start-up costs were minimal and she could use
her expertise.
Now the company makes 200,000 items of pet clothing a
year: ranging from warm winter dog jackets to morning and
wedding dresses for canines attending owners’ nuptials.
Hasegawa and her team have worked hard at making the site
fun and engaging. Hasegawa and other staff write about their
own pets in the website’s popular newsletter. The company
even encourages employees to bring their pets to work.
“It is all about customers’ love for their pets,” says Hasegawa.
So iDog and iCat also make good use of user-generated
content. Most of the pet photos from their site and print
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catalogue are of customer’s dogs and cats. The company
sends the clothes for free and owners send pictures in return.
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Bene Bene
Timeless Beauty
from One Century
to the Next
Chie Naito
Executive Vice President,
Beneunited Corporation
The several thousand pieces that Bene Bene sell on their
website are a polished blend of Japanese craftsmanship and
European sophistication. The jewelry is designed in-house
then wrought in their workshop in Yamanashi Prefecture,
a region that boasts 400 years of world-class
jewel-cutting heritage.
After the economy bubble burst, the local jewelry industry
went into stagnation and many skilled craftsmen lost their
jobs. But Bene Bene’s vice-president Chie Naito resolved to
“People said it is impossible to build
bring back the industry’s sparkle with a new business model.
deep relationships with customers
Thanks to an online shopping experience that Naito modestly
over the Internet. But we did it.”
describes as “a little bit addictive,” Bene Bene has built up
dedicated community of fans. Their jewelry’s story is told the
same way it is made—with attention to the utmost detail.
Many customers are interested not just in jewelry, but the
history, art and literature of the period too.
The most enthusiastic fans even have a nickname for each
other—Benneller. It’s not unusual for some Bennellers to
spend a million yen a year on jewelry from the site. One
particularly devoted Beneller even spends 10 times that.
Naito says that when she meets a regular customer for the
first time at one of their offline events, it is like greeting an
old friend.
“People said it is impossible to build deep relationships
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with customers over the Internet. But we did it.”
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Kazuhisa Masuda
President of Maruju Co., LTD.
Fa br i c P lus
Adding Value
Bedding isn’t perhaps the sort of product you would expect
customers to buy regularly. But Fabric Plus has no shortage
of online customers that come back again and again to their
Rakuten store.Their president, Kazuhisa Masuda, believes
that much of their success is due to the effort they have put
into making their product special.
The brand’s parent company, Maruju, was founded in 1928.
“We decided to compete
on quality, not price.”
During its early years, Masuda’s grandfather washed cotton
in the river that runs past their factory and laid it out to dry
on the banks. But the family firm’s history almost came to
an abrupt end when cheap Chinese imports started flooding
the Japanese market.
In 2002, Masuda responded by launching an online shop on
Rakuten Ichiba. With his wife now working for the business
and with a newly-hired designer, Masuda began marketing
the high quality of the company’s cloth and the fact that is
was authentically made in Japan.
“We decided to compete on quality, not price. Selling via the
internet rather than wholesale lets Fabric Plus tell customers
exactly what its products are made from, how they are made,
and who made them. That level of detail just wouldn’t be
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possible in an ordinary shop,” stresses Masuda.
Still, the fascination with his company’s story and what is,
after all, quite an everyday product sometimes surprises him.
Around half of the website’s newsletter subscribers have
never even bought a Fabric Plus product—at least not yet.
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P ow e r DJ ’s
Disc Drive
DJ equipment specialist Power DJ’S joined Rakuten Ichiba in
2003, the same year that the company opened its second
shop in the eclectic Ikebukuro district.
Taisuke Ichihara manages Power DJ’s Ikebukuro and Rakuten
Ichiba shops and oversees an ingenious synergy between
online and offline businesses.
“We want our web shop and our
physical shop to provide exactly
the same level of service.”
Many website customers come to the physical shop to handle
the products and get face-to-face advice. “We want our web
shop and our physical shop to provide exactly the same level
of service,” Ichihara says from a corner of the floor-to-ceilingpacked basement store.
Offline and online, his aim is to sell “precisely the right
Taisuke Ichihara
Chief of Power DJ’s
Ikebukuro Shop
equipment for the right person,” and he spends much of his
time advising customers by email, telephone, and in person.
Sometimes that even extends to talking a customer out of
buying the most expensive kit.
Ichihara keeps in touch with his customers through his
Rakuten blog. In it he discusses everything from the latest
turntables and DJ software, to artists and clubs. It’s not
unusual for one of his 5,000 subscribers to pop round to say
hello if they are in Tokyo. Readers from as far afield as Korea
and China have turned up at the back-street shop.
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“We aren’t just selling DJ kit here,” says Ichihara. “We are
building a community where people can enjoy music.”
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Koh Takagi
President of B.P.I. Co., LTD.
S i lv e r B u ll et
Tokyo
Fashion
“Our customers are the sort of people who would buy clothes
before food,” says B.P.I Co., LTD. president Koh Takagi, the
founder of Silver Bullet.
Those customers are mostly men in their late teens and early
twenties, and many spend the bulk of their disposable income
on clothes. “Some of our staff here are the same,” says
Takagi. “Their lives revolve around fashion and it isn’t easy
“We knew how to make clothes,
photograph them, and sell them,
but running a business was
something else.”
to satisfy people like that.”
The garments cost 10,000 yen on average each, which is
twice as much as other apparel shops. All items are in the
slim and tight Shibuya fashion. “Most of our items would be
an XXXS in a mainstream shop,” jokes Takagi.
Silver Bullet provides detailed information on each item,
including painstakingly precise measurements, and uses
fashion models with ideal body types to hopefully make up
for the fact that customers can’t try things on.
From its conception in 2002 the company grew even faster
than 30-year-old Takagi and his two partners expected.
Monthly turnover went from zero to 30 million yen in just
four months.
They were too busy to give much thought to the future of
the business, but their Rakuten EC consultant proposed
ambitious targets. They discussed everything from online
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sales to page design to finding a bigger warehouse. “We
knew how to make clothes, photograph them, sell them,” he
says, “but running a business was something else.”
Yet six months later their turnover had swelled to 100 million
yen a month. “Without our EC consultant, I don’t think we
would have had the courage to do that.”
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Yoshihiro Yamagishi
CEO of Yamagishi Bamboo
Material Shop, Inc.
Ta ke to r a
Modernizing a
Family Tradition
Many companies claim a unique product, but Taketora have
stronger reason than most. The “toratake” bamboo they use
to make their products grows only in the hills around their
head office.
The great-grandfather of Taketora’s current CEO was greatly
attracted to this special bamboo and started the family’s
bamboo-ware business in 1894.
“I could see the huge potential of
Rakuten’s broad network and
customer base.”
Like three generations before him, CEO Yoshihiro Yamagishi
has devoted his life to bamboo. And in 2002, he launched
Taketora’s online shop on Rakuten Ichiba. His aim was to
tell as many people as possible about his family’s special
“toratake” bamboo.
“Some people around here didn’t have a very good image of
online business,” said Yamagishi, “but I could see the huge
potential of Rakuten’s broad network and customer base.”
Today, Taketora stock over 1,200 products on Rakuten —
everything from hairclips to furniture. “Japanese people can
make almost anything out of bamboo,” says Yoshihiro. “After
all, once that’s all they had.”
“People told us that bamboo would never sell online,” he
recalls. But it did, making Taketora one of Rakuten’s successful
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shops. “If we hadn’t started selling online,” says the CEO, “the
business probably wouldn’t have survived.” Taketora now relies
on online sales for the bulk of its business.
Bamboo has been the life of Yamagishi’s family for four
generations, and a companion of the Japanese people
for centuries.
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Katsuhisa Yagi
CEO of Chocolate
Design Company
Va n i ll a B ea ns
Sweet Success
Katsuhisa Yagi launched Vanilla Beans in 2000 from a shed
in his garden. Since then Yagi has created plenty of happy
customers all over Japan.
The Yokohama-based company sells about 30 different
products, its most popular being a slab of chocolate set
between two cookies. A third of their annual sales come
“Making the world happy
with chocolate.”
around Valentine’s day when it is traditional for Japanese
women to buy chocolates for men. Don’t fret ladies, it is over
to the men to return the favour a month later on White Day.
As one of the first companies to sell chocolate via the internet
in Japan, Vanilla Beans faced a few challenges ensuring a
perfect product arrived on consumers doorsteps.
One such challenge was dealing with the scorching
Japanese summer. The problem was not that the chocolate
melted, but that the refrigerated trucks were too cold. Another
was ensuring that the chocolates didn’t break in transit. Yagi
experimented with various types of packaging, testing them
with a one-meter drop, until he was happy that he had
a solution.
Yagi’s focus on happiness extends to the sourcing of their
chocolate. Since 2009 all the company’s chocolate has been
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fair-trade, much of it from the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Each
week Vanilla Beans holds an auction of chocolate mis-shapes
with 90% of the proceeds going to build a school in Ghana.
“We want everyone to be happy,” says Yagi. “The people who
grow the chocolate, the people who make it, and the people
who eat it.”
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Y u m e t e n bo
Learning with
Rakuten
Takahiro Oka runs one of Rakuten Ichiba’s most popular
apparel shops, selling glamorous clothes, footwear and
accessories to women in their early twenties.
But seven years ago the CEO of Yumetenbo was new to both
apparel and online selling. “When we launched on Rakuten
Ichiba we hardly knew the first thing about apparel,” he says.
“Rakuten taught me the
ABC of online business.”
“Rakuten University taught me the ABC of e-commerce.
One of the most important things I learned was to make
us different.”
That’s why Yumetenbo invests so much time and money in
their website’s visual imagery. Over half their sales come from
cell phones and they need to be sure to catch customers’
Takahiro Oka
CEO of Yumetenbo Co., LTD.
attention even from small screens.
Thanks to a well-equipped photo studio at HQ, Oka can make
sure everything is just right. All the same, it’s not unusual for
him to order speedy reshoots after customer feedback.
Oka has seen his own business mirror Rakuten’s rapid
growth. He recently opened a store on Rakuten Ichiba Taiwan
and has already set his sights further afield.
But Oka hasn’t forgotten his early experiences at the Rakuten
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University and meeting shop-owners with the sort of sales he
could only dream of. It is different now, of course.
“I’ve heard that Rakuten University uses my shop as a
teaching example,” he says proudly.
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Rakuten, Inc.
http://global.rakuten.com/
Shinagawa Seaside Rakuten Tower,
4-12-3 Higashishinagawa, Shinagawa-ku,
Tokyo 140-0002, Japan