East meets West in the e-commerce market today, as Japanese kingpin Rakuten acquires UK entertainment store Play.com for the princely sum of £25 million.
Rakuten's has been busy to find promising business acquisitions over the past year to expand its global operations. In 2010 it bought out US e-retailer Buy.com, as well as French outlet PriceMinister S.A. The play for Play.com enforces its European presence.
In Japan, the company owns the following: an internet shopping mall service; online auction house; e-commerce consultancy; entertainment e-tailers; digital distribution services; CD and DVD rental services and even an online gold course reservation service. It also commands a credit card and banking business as well as a baseball team.
Here's some boring business rhetoric, courtesy of Rakuten chairman Hiroshi Mikitani. "The UK market is one of Europe's largest and most mature e-commerce markets. Play.com is not only a pioneer in the market, but also one of the UK's most successful e-commerce businesses. We aim to leverage our e-commerce strength and experience to further expand and develop Play.com's business model and channel its loyal user base, merchants, and deep product offerings into Rakuten's global e-commerce network."
We wonder if Play.com employees will get annual business leave to go to Japan and watch the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles play. They didn't really do so well in last year's season though. Maybe they'll pick it up this year.
Source: Marketwatch
Rakuten's has been busy to find promising business acquisitions over the past year to expand its global operations. In 2010 it bought out US e-retailer Buy.com, as well as French outlet PriceMinister S.A. The play for Play.com enforces its European presence.
In Japan, the company owns the following: an internet shopping mall service; online auction house; e-commerce consultancy; entertainment e-tailers; digital distribution services; CD and DVD rental services and even an online gold course reservation service. It also commands a credit card and banking business as well as a baseball team.
Here's some boring business rhetoric, courtesy of Rakuten chairman Hiroshi Mikitani. "The UK market is one of Europe's largest and most mature e-commerce markets. Play.com is not only a pioneer in the market, but also one of the UK's most successful e-commerce businesses. We aim to leverage our e-commerce strength and experience to further expand and develop Play.com's business model and channel its loyal user base, merchants, and deep product offerings into Rakuten's global e-commerce network."
We wonder if Play.com employees will get annual business leave to go to Japan and watch the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles play. They didn't really do so well in last year's season though. Maybe they'll pick it up this year.
Source: Marketwatch
Comments
gingineer 21 Sep 2011 11:24
1/5
i like play.com - i find it fairly easy to use and unlike amazon there isn't too many products. i.e. when you search "AA batteries" you have a reasonable selection instead of 200 3rd party sellers.
Blade803 21 Sep 2011 11:49
2/5
Play.com are pretty good, but unfortunately they don't ship certain things to us here in Ireland, so I use amazon a lot more than Play these days, I do agree with gingineer, you do get a lot of 3rd party sellers, but you can fix that by just scrolling down the page and looking to the left and selecting amazon, so it cust out all the other sellers.
more comments below our sponsor's message
deleted 21 Sep 2011 15:48
3/5
Plays delivery system is all over the place though, a bloody book can take 2 weeks to arrive, I like Amazon for the delivery side of things..
Tone 21 Sep 2011 17:14
4/5
I prefer amazon as play isnt always the cheapest. i do use it though for selling old games and stuff but i think thats about it. i use shopto.net for games and amazon for pretty much everything else...
gingineer 22 Sep 2011 08:12
5/5
I avoid amazon after an incident unless i really have to... I know plays postage time is a little snail pace. but i've never had complaints and find it cheapest quite often.
Must admit i haven't tried shopto.net infact are there any other online retailers people use and recommend?
Must admit i haven't tried shopto.net infact are there any other online retailers people use and recommend?