What is Rakuten?

 

After a brief interlude in the late 2010s and early 2020s, Rakuten is once again available in Europe. But what is this versatile digital provider whose name means “optimism” in Japanese? Read on to find out!

 

 

Introducing Rakuten

Founded in 1997, Rakuten (then called MDM, Inc.) was one of Japan’s first e-Commerce companies. With just six employees, Rakuten Ichiba was launched as a B2C internet shopping mall. The venture grew and soon offered other services, like a specialised auction site that also allowed C2C transactions.

 

Today, with 487.2 million monthly visitors, rakuten.co.jp is the second most popular online marketplace in Japan behind amazon.co.jp that boasts 563.3 million monthly visitors.

 

However, Rakuten is so much more than a simple online marketplace. The company offers seven major services across 30 countries worldwide, including messaging app Rakuten Viber, content streaming platforms Rakuten TV and Viki, as well as e-reader kobo and Rakuten Advertising.

 

The company’s various services are available in Japan, the US, France, Spain, Germany and more. Rakuten’s European online marketplace is based in France, but it ships products to several other countries.

 

 

Screenshot of the homepage of rakuten.co.jp

 

 

Rakuten in numbers

The company reports an annual revenue of 2.1 trillion Japanese yen (ca. $15 billion) and possesses around 25% of the Japanese B2C e-Commerce market. Rakuten has over 30,000 employees serving about 1.8 billion members (including businesses and consumers) worldwide.

 

As an all-around marketplace, Rakuten offers all kinds of products including electronics, fashion, childcare, gardening, DIY and pet care. The marketplace holds around 30% share of the Japanese market in apparel, food and household items.

 

 

Selling on Rakuten

The company works with third party sellers and offers them various advantages to facilitate their entry to the platform. For example, international Rakuten sellers can rely on the company’s warehousing infrastructure in Japan and simply work on a dropshipping basis.

 

Another advantage is the ability to customise your Rakuten store according to your own brand image. This is a major USP for Rakuten, as many other e-Commerce companies don’t allow their sellers this much freedom when designing their storefront on the marketplace.

 

The platform allows you to feature your own colour scheme, put up a unique banner, create top product categories and more. This feature is especially important for brands that recognise the value in their reputation and want to maintain control over their products’ online presentation.

 

Find out how globaleyez can help you achieve a flawless marketplace presentation!

 

If you want to become a Rakuten seller, you need to provide various details and documents about your business. The marketplace requires sellers to disclose their business name, email address, VAT number and product barcodes.

 

It takes about a week for Rakuten to go through the information and approve the new account or ask for clarifications. For example, sellers’ own websites need to adhere to GDPR rules. A failure to do so may result in a rejection of your Rakuten application.

 

Most marketplaces require a lot less from their sellers. Find out the details here!

 

 

Cashback via Rakuten

Not only sellers, but shoppers can also receive a significant advantage for engaging with Rakuten. If you use Rakuten’s app, website or browser extension when shopping at various other stores, Rakuten will give you a percentage of the money you spent in the form of cashback.

 

Rakuten records all your purchases made this way and if you reach $5 or more, you’ll receive the money via a check or PayPal. Cashbacks are paid out four times a year. So far, Rakuten claims to have paid out over $1 billion in cashback.

 

Related topics

Learn all about the most interesting marketplaces across the globe

 

Specialised marketplaces in e-Commerce

 

Amazon levies new fee on sellers for Seller Fulfilled Prime

 

 

Rakuten in Germany

Rakuten is no stranger to Europe. In fact, the Japanese e-Commerce giant had operated marketplaces in Spain, Germany, Austria and the UK in the mid-2010s. However, due to various circumstances, Rakuten had to pull out of these markets one by one. The German marketplace was closed in 2020, due to reasons like an insufficient market presence and an increasing number of bad quality product listings. 

 

Currently, Rakuten France is the company’s only active online marketplace in Europe. Nevertheless, Rakuten delivers products to many countries from both Japan and France, which means that customers in other European countries don’t have to miss out on opportunities offered by the Japanese e-Commerce giant.

 

While rakuten.de used to lead to the company’s German marketplace, nowadays it’s a landing page for Rakuten’s cashback programme.

 

 

Screenshot of the homepage of rakuten.de

 

 

Customers can register with Rakuten on the site and learn more about the amount of cashback they can earn by shopping in various stores.

 

Well-known brands like Nike, Lego, Sephora, Michael Kors, Urban Outfitters, H&M and many more work with Rakuten and offer various amounts of cashback from 1% up to 20%. Interestingly, even marketplaces like eBay, Notino and Shop Apotheke cooperate with the Japanese e-Commerce company’s cashback programme.

 

Apart from e-Commerce, Rakuten offers various other services to its European customers, including messaging via Viber, content distribution via Rakuten TV, Viki and kobo as well as banking thanks to Rakuten Europe Bank.

 

 

Online brand protection on Rakuten

Rakuten is committed to protecting copyrights and trademarks, training its employees on the importance of intellectual property protection. However, since the marketplace allows third party sellers to create their own listings, it’s entirely possible for fraudulent and/or infringing sellers to appear on the platform.

 

Luckily, the marketplace is aware of the issue and allows brands and stakeholders to report infringing content. The trouble is, who’s going to notice such content?

 

If you don’t want to spend your days scouring Rakuten (and every other corner of the internet) for potentially infringing content, you need to set up an online brand protection programme.

 

We at globaleyez offer flexible and versatile IP protection services to create perfectly tailored solutions for our clients.

 

For example, our marketplace monitoring service is geared towards detecting potentially infringing listings on over 150 marketplaces worldwide, Rakuten included. With keyword-based searches, we quickly detect listings that, unless previously authorised by you, use your brand or product names without your consent. Thanks to smart filters, we can discard authorised listings to focus on those that infringe on your IP rights.

 

On top of that, our image monitoring service is perfect for detecting your copyright-protected images or copied versions of them anywhere online. Since fraudsters often use one or the other to advertise for their fake goods, this service is essential for locating fraudulent offers outside of traditional marketplaces.

 

Once we have all the potentially fraudulent listings lined up, it’s time to gather more information about the origins of the products and their sellers. A test purchase is perfect for this purpose, as it allows us to acquire essential data that fraudulent product listings often try to hide. Thanks to careful documentation, you can even use our findings as evidence if you decide to take the matter to court.

 

Finally, we can enforce your rights and ensure the removal of the infringing content from the internet.

 

 

Conclusion

Rakuten is a popular platform offering an array of services to brands and consumers alike. Working with Rakuten may be beneficial for your brand; however, don’t let fraudsters enjoy the same benefits.

 

Contact us and let’s discuss what kind of brand protection solutions would fit your brand’s needs.