Rakuten.co.uk (still trading as Play.com) are starting to aggressively recruit UK sellers. Their message is that as from April they became solely a marketplace and no longer retail. You’re no longer just listing the items in Play.com’s catalogue, you can to replica your website on Play.com and run the store exactly the same as your website
That’s a strong dig at Amazon and echos eBay’s recent messages that they’re not in competition with you.
It goes further that that though, Rakuten now own Pintrest, Wuaki (Streaming films), KOBO, (The WHSmith Kindle equivalent) and a logistics company so that they’ll be able to hold stock (sounds like European fulfilment without the headache). The plan is to merge all these companies with Play to make Play.com one big marketplace.
Rakuten Play.com Fees
Play.com have three different commission choices on the basis that the more you pay the lower the selling commission you pay. The Mega shop is £435 per month, Standard at £175 and Starter plan £43.50 per month. However Play.com are asking for six months shop fees to be paid up front.
What Rakuten say about their proposition
Rakuten say that they are “offering all their merchants new ways to communicate with their Play customers (Storefronts, Rakuten Mail, Superpoints etc) and increase their sales“. Rakuten claim that “No other marketplace offers anything similar. A higher monthly flat fee allows all merchants to use these new communication tools, while enjoying a much lower commission rate compared to any other competing marketplace in the UK“.
If you’d like to know more we have a pdf copy of the presentation Rakuten are showing all potential new Play.com retailers.
15 Responses
Really looking forward to see what this marketplace can do. Have the starter plan and like the back end, mainly because of the control you have over promotions and advertising (Something Amazon/ebay don’t do too well).
Sounds good on paper and moving forward I don’t doubt that it will be great platform. Unfortunately merchants aren’t currently given the necessary tools to add anything but their already listed items to the storefront unless it exists in the play.com catalogue. On signing up, paying the upfront fee and being assured by our personal account manager that we’d have the ability to create our own listings, (2 weeks ago), we have now been told that this ability (to create our own unique listings) is ‘in the making’ and could be a further 2 weeks from going live. Whilst this wouldn’t be such a problem, the fact is I personally have had listings awaiting upload since March as all the tech guys have been focussed on this new setup, and now have a stagnant shop front – something that is reflected in my sales. I hope the new function to upload is sooner rather than later as paying double fees yet losing sales has been a poor choice for me so far
For those who auction and sell collectables and s/h still waiting for an ebay alternative from one of the big players. Is this ever going to happen? Or is the auction format forever going to remain an ebay exclusive? Or is the format doomed in the years ahead as there seems little interest from any of the big mall type marketplaces to offer this format and/or a suitable category structure.
We were contacted a couple of weeks ago and it does look like an improvement on what play had before.
I asked what Rakutan’s USP will be, ie Amazon have Amazon Prime and eBay have Nectar points and i was told about their Superpoints, which 1% (exc VAT) of their fees go towards and although not big here in the UK at the moment, apparently its quite well used in some of their other marketplaces.
I am going to Rakuten’s Play.com Expo 2013, which is on London tomorrow to get a better overview of this new approach as well as hopfully pick up some good “tips”.
Lee
When did Rakuten buy pinterest? last I heard they had invested
Let’s see what they can do aside from the DVDs CDs and Electronics. £43.50+VAT then 10% seems a bit high for what still is a minority marketplace for most products.
When I last looked at play – Rakuten they charged a TRANSFER fee to transfer funds from your account balance to your bank account.
With their new structure I take it that transfers are free.
Does anyone know if that is correct?
Simon
Im gonna be in on this when you can list items with your own barcode etc same as amazon.
Does anyone know if this is the way things are going or is it dvds or existing products within play only ?
£43.50 per month and 8.5%-10% sounds like a lot to me, paying 6 months is £261. I can’t say I find this very attractive at all, it is hard for me to see a worthwhile return.
Simple spreadsheet like this will help you to find cost of selling:
https://daytodayebay.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/cost-of-selling-on-ebay.xls
Change the % as you need !
(copy and paste in in your browser)
Considering this as it might have potential and I’m fed up with eBay.
My only reservation is paying 6 months up front, it’s quite an outlay to speculate on a new platform without testing the water first, have any other sellers on here taken the pluge and how are sales?