Seller Dynamics have extended their online marketplace management service to support eight Rakuten sites. Rakuten sites in the UK, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore & Taiwan are now supported giving retailers a series of new sales opportunities biased toward the east.
The additions complement the existing support already in place for the various Amazon, eBay and Fnac marketplaces and will appeal to those retailers already selling throughout Europe who want to increase their sales with little effort. For those with the correct products the eastern Rakuten marketplaces offer a potentially exciting way to test and penetrate new markets.
Whilst we know that (since the change from Play.com) Rakuten UK has been slow to take off, the same isn’t true for other Rakuten sites around the world. The (ex Tradoria) site in Germany should be of interest and especially the ability to sell to countries in the east.
“We’ve added in the 8 Rakuten’s for a couple of reasons” said Alex Ogilvie MD at Seller Dynamics, “Obviously for folks selling in Europe adding in another couple of markets is a no brainer. But it’s the marketplaces that are further afield that we are most interested in seeing how they perform. Good quality, high value UK and European brands are likely to do well. With little or no financial risk in trying Singapore or Japan out, it’s a good way for retailers to test the market”.
Seller Dynamics is provided as a fully featured marketplace management system providing repricing, order management, stock control, despatch and goods-in management facilities. The system also provides a programmable interface to permit third party business systems to connect where needed and has a completely free 30 day trial available.
2 Responses
Sadly, a few of those Rakuten marketplaces have recently shut down….
https://www.techinasia.com/rakuten-exit-singapore-malaysia-indonesia-thailand
Slightly off topic, but has anyone experienced any kind of success on Rakuten UK at all?
We’ve been selling on there since it was Play.com and whilst even then it wasn’t the best performing of our sales channels, it still pulled in a couple of £1000 a month.
Since the change over to Rakuten it has been shocking though. We are only getting a handful of orders in a week, if that. Yes it’s a slow time of year, but our last disbursement from Rakuten was for the grand total of £25.
I keep listing on there in the hope it will take off sooner or later, but it’s starting to feel like it’s not worth the effort really. Plus we are now having Linnworks inventory syncing issues on top of it all.
Rakuten just don’t seem to be marketing themselves that much in the UK, which is a bit mystifying considering the size and profile of the company in the East. If I went outside now and asked 10 random people if they had heard of Play.com, I reckon at least half would say yes even though it doesn’t exist any more, ask the same question about Rakuten and you’d be lucky if 1 or 2 people knew what it was.