If you’re looking for a new place to shop then check out Rakuten, they’re now shipping to the UK.
It’s no real surprise that they’re flexing their muscles and trying to attract business from the west. They’ve already bought Buy.com and Priceminister in France. “Rakuten Ichiba” is Japan’s largest Internet shopping mall and they have over 6,000 employees to support their businesses which also include insurance and travel.
Their UK buying site is powered by Google Translate so all product descriptions appear in English, but you’ll still see prices in Japanese Yen. If you’ve purchased anything from Rakuten (or if you do) let us know how your experience went in comments below.
3 Responses
Looks expensive, had a look at an iPad £970 notes.
Seems there is a major flaw.No shipping charges can be displayed unless you know the weight of the item. Weight of items are not listed, have to place an order wait for shipping charges.
I ordered some Converse in a Wedge Heel Open Toe style not available except from Converse Japan, and they arrived extremely quickly with very reasonable shipping charges. The ordering process was fairly simple. I was able to more or less adequately translate the post-sale emails using Babelfish, but the subject headers were in English so I basically knew what they were about to begin with.
I actually bought 3 pairs altogether, because they were about to be sold out especially in larger (better for Western feet) sizes: 1 pair in each color for myself, 1 pair to resell on eBay and hopefully pay for the other 2. All 3 came from different sellers, and my experience was equally good with each. The first pair arrived in less than a week! I was able to pay 1 seller with PayPal, too.
Another Converse-addicted friend also reported positive experiences in 2 transactions for Converse from Japan, and he’s quite fussy.
The best part was, my Converse were on sale — only 6800 yen down from 7480, completely comparable to what I would have paid for similarly specialty-style US Converse from converse.com or Zappos. Even with shipping added, pricing was still competitive. And these were Converse I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else but from Japan.