Meet the Marketplace: Rakuten - Empowering Brands and Retail.

Catch up with this Meet the Marketplace session on-demand here.

‍

In the Meet the Marketplace session, Rakuten - Empowering Brands and Retail, Charlotte Lechatreux, International Business Developer, introduced the audience to Rakuten as a whole and have an overview of the ecommerce opportunities. 

Discover

• How Rakuten ecommerce works
• How Rakuten is working towards sustainable development
• Creating a Rakuten e-shop
• How to get started

International Business Developer Charlotte Lechatreux provided a deeper overview of how Rakuten supports digitization of all businesses and started by giving an introduction to the company itself Founded in Japan, Rakuten has more than 25,000 employees and offers 80 services, including ecommerce. Forbes ranked Rakuten as one of the top 100 most influential companies in the world.

Lechatreux noted that Rakuten is also ranked in the top five marketplaces in Europe for sustainable development. “Since twenty years Rakuten is part of the circular economy,” Lechatreux says. 

In fact, she points out that two out of three products sold on the platform are second-hand products, with 200 million new and second-hand products. It is the first buying and selling platform between private consumers for cultural second-hand products. They have seen 65 percent growth in one year, she adds.

In the session, Lechatreux also shares information on how the Rakuten e-shop allows merchants to take control over their brand image, improve buyer experience and highlight the best offers. Sellers can also display a Shipped by Rakuten badge to promote their product as well. She also explains how commissions and fees work for sellers. 

There is an also an affiliate program with Rakuten with 1,500 affiliate partners. For sellers that have or plan to have a location in France, Rakuten could be a new source of traffic for physical stores with generating in-store traffic. The Rakuten fulfillment network provides flexible inventory management.

To get started, a seller fills out the form, then activates their Rakuten e-shop. From there, the next step is uploading products on the platform and activate payment of sales. “We truly invite you to put as many products as you can so you have better chance to sell,” she adds. After uploading products, the last step is activating payment of sales, and then a seller is ready to go.