Last week, Tamebay published a document for merchants that went some way to explaining the transition they are planning from closing down play.com to launching a new marketplace called rakuten.co.uk.
Many readers who are already paying a subscription to play.com (and were considering renewing it) were surprised to learn that play.com was to be scrapped and replaced by rakuten.co.uk.
We were contacted by Rakuten and they asked us to remove the document that some sellers had received and sent to us from the site. We agreed. They have now subsequently provided us with two new documents with some extra information regarding their plans.
You can find these documents here.
The sales document can be found here.
Some general FAQs on the transition.
I’ve got to say that if I were a play.com merchant right now, and I was getting this information from Tamebay in the first instance, and hadn’t been in receipt of information from Rakuten directly about this change by now…. I’d be pretty miffed. (To put it lightly.)
Rakuten have clearly been remiss in valuing their current sellers by furnishing them with info if the comments and correspondence that we have received is to be believed.
Whilst there is lots to like in the concept, and we welcome any new players into the market, too many questions remain unanswered about the transition to allow us to be enthusiastic right now. And such shoddy comms to paying customers does make us wonder whether existing merchants feature on their radar at all.
When considering the proposition, it’s impossible to evaluate whether the platform is worth investing in or subscribing to without understanding what their consumer marketing strategy might be. A marketplace is only as good as its buyers and the info we have thus far offers no answers there. The pricing info is moot if there isn’t a buying base.
Tamebay’s advice, in the light of the info, and our contact with them is this:
– If you’re spending any time or money on play.com, stop. The marketplace is being shelved and your efforts are best directed elsewhere.
– Hold your fire on rakuten.co.uk until after Christmas. Hopefully by then more information will be available. Not least regarding recruiting buyers.
– Take the time with other channels and develop sales there. Play/Rakuten is a concern for 2015.
– Quiz your providers, if you have them, about how you might transition to Rakuten if you’re using play. We’d love to hear if they have reached out to the software providers of marketplace services already. If they haven’t that is very worrying indeed.
There are too many uncertainties right now for rakuten.co.uk to be a serious concern for serious business sellers before the New Year. Direct your energies else where.
4 Responses
Well I for one feel cheated, I paid my subscription to Play just one week before this all came out with no mention of anything.
I know sometimes things get leaked, but still I have not really received an email stating anything about the new marketplace from anyone senior. If I was in charge of Play/Rakuten UK I would of sent an email round to all sellers to reassure them of what’s happening.
There is still no clear message as what the next few months holds for existing sellers on Play.com, is that it for the site, will anything still happen or are sales going to drop off a cliff….
Come on guys we need some reassurance of what’s happened as we have stuck by you and paid our money! If there was no upfront fee that would be fine but there is, perhaps this should of been dropped for the last few months of Play.com’s life?
As a seller I have still received nothing from Play.com regarding this, I think it is clear that they do not value their existing sellers. Maybe they are just trying to get as many 6 month subscriptions paid as possible by keeping existing sellers (who don’t read Tamebay) in the dark. We certainly will not be renewing in September.
So from what I gather, the play account will become inactive and we need to sign up to rakuten.co.uk? I registered my interest with them so I guess I’ll find out at some point.
I use Channeladvisor and they have support for their US site so I guess they should offer support for the UK site when it is live so that may be an advantage of some sort.
I would agree with Dan that it is best to ignore until next year. Far too much uncertainty to bother wasting time one.