I just found this quote and thought that rather than adding it on to my earlier one, it should stand on its own.
From the April 1, 2013 edition of Wired.
Quote:
From the start, Mikitani has shunned what he calls the “vending machine” model of e-commerce, the utilitarian, product-centered approach favored by Amazon. From the beginning, he has built Rakuten as a collection of individual digital shops branded and run by the merchants doing the selling. Mikitani believes shops foster a sense of human connectedness that makes shopping more fun.
It’s an instinct that’s paid off handsomely. Rakuten now handles more than one-quarter of all e-commerce business in Japan — more than twice as much as Amazon’s share in the country. Now in more than a dozen countries, the multi-billion–dollar company has expanded from shopping into a range of services, from travel to banking to e-readers (Rakuten owns Kobo). It could be the largest internet company you’ve never heard of.
But Mikitani’s planning to change that. In 2010, Rakuten acquired Buy.com. Earlier this year, the site was rebranded Rakuten.com and will serve as the company’s launching pad into American e-commerce (though for now it’s still in transition from its former self into its fully Rakuten-ized version). Mikitani recently stopped by Wired during the North America leg of his tour to promote his new book to talk about his approach to business, why he’s betting big on Pinterest, and why Rakuten requires even the workers at its Japanese headquarters to speak English.
Mikitani told me that the key to claiming a bigger share of the U.S. market lies in recreating the shop-centric approach that led to such success in Japan.
“We are a bazaar. We are not a supermarket,” Mikitani says. “We are creating a first-class shopping district instead of being a retailer ourselves.”
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