Japan's Rakuten to Acquire Buy.com for $250mil

Japan’s biggest e-commerce site Rakuten announced that it will acquire Buy.com Inc for $250 million, foraying into the U.S. market for the first time as it steps up its push to expand overseas.

Earlier this year, Rakuten announced a joint venture with China’s top search engine Baidu to launch a virtual shopping mall targeting the world’s largest online population and has said it is also looking at opportunities to enter European and other markets.

According to Rakuten’s statement, Buy.com (based in California) had revenue of $62.5 million in 2009 and has a client base of about 14 million for its electronic commerce operations.

Rakuten also runs operations in Taiwan and Thailand.

Motoko Hunt

Motoko Hunt manages the SEO for all of Adobe's properties in Japan and the APAC region. Prior to joining Adobe, Motoko established AJPR in 1998; she has been providing search marketing consulting services targeting Japan and Asia to companies around the world. Her services have made a big impact on the search marketing campaigns of some of the world's most popular multi-national brands. A number of her articles have been published on industry websites and printed media including MultiLingual Computing and the International Journal of Localisation. She also writes about the Japanese online market on her blog at AJPR and contributes to several online magazines in Japan and Asia. She served as a member of the board of directors of SEMPO in 2010-2012, and is a chairperson of the SEMPO Asia-Pacific Committee.

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