The Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten has bought one of the UK’s largest online retail sites, Play.com. Author: Deborah Bates
The Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten has bought one of the UK’s largest online retail sites, Play.com.
Hailed as one of the biggest e-commerce sites in Britain, Play.com is a very popular website which has – throughout its 13 years of service – worked to become a big supplier of DVDs, music and video games.
According to FT.com, Rakuten decided to make the £2.5 million investment in a bid to improve its worldwide presence; competing with big names like Amazon and Ebay. In order to provide realistic competition for these brands, Rakuten will need to ensure Play.com has a top-notch selection of products and a stable online payment system.
The chief executive of Rakuten, Hiroshi Mikitani, spoke out about his confidence in the fact that his company can keep growing Play.com.
“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,” he told Thedrum.co.uk.
It is perhaps no surprise that Mikitani chose Britain for his next investment, as he recently said that the UK boasts the “largest e-commerce market in Europe”.
The investment comes off the back of other similar developments; as only recently, Rakuten procured the PriceMinster site and Tradoria, a Dutch online shopping centre.
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