Rakuten China Launches a Group Buy Portal, With 50 Big-Name Brands

Rakuten China, a joint venture between Baidu and the Japanese e-commerce giant, has today rolled out a brand-oriented group shopping portal.

The new group buy mall – take a look here – features deals on popular brands such as Adidas, Nike, Dior, Nokia, and Apple. In total, 50 brands are on-board with Rakuten’s group shopping site. Some brands even get their own mini-site boutique, such as Pepsi’s.

China’s newest Groupon clone has some heavy-hitting potential in this sector – it’s a formal joint-venture between Japan’s number one e-commerce site and China’s largest search engine. Back in January of last year, TechCrunch reported that the duo had invested US$50 million into the Chinese B2C site, with ownership split 51/49 between Rakuten (JASDAQ: 4755) and Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU).

This new move certainly represents some threat to Taobao’s deals site, Tencent’s QQTuan, Lashou, and Meituan, which have slowly emerged as marginal market leaders in this very fragmented market in China (see the graph on the left).

That’s despite Rakuten’s new portal not covering leisure deals, such as restaurants.

It very much looks like Rakuten has gone for a certain segment of the group buy market, and is aiming to grab market share by allaying the concerns of consumers about potential fake goods – especially for products such as shoes, make-up, and gadgets – on its numerous smaller rivals.

You might like to check out this infographic showing the history of Rakuten from its origins in Japan to its spread across the e-commerce scene in Asia. Also, the Rakuten mothership the other day released its Q2 2011 earnings results.

[Source: Techweb – article in Chinese]