With an Eye on Japanese Products, China’s 360Buy Makes an Acquisition

360Buy.com, China’s second-largest B2C e-commerce site, has acquired Minitiao.com, a specialist online mall for imported Japanese products. It gives 360Buy – also known as Jingdong Mall – a whole new range of supply channels from Japan for items such as clothing and cutesy toys.

The acquisition of the small Chinese company reportedly took place earlier this month but is only now being made public. The financial details have not been revealed, or whether the site will continue at its own domain or be absorbed into the 360Buy domain.

Minitiao gives 360Buy a boutique-like range of stylish inventory to add to its arsenal of product categories in its ongoing battle against B2C market leader, Alibaba’s TMall.

It also points to 360Buy having a more global outlook for its sourced products, with rumors that the company – which might go for a US IPO later this year – is aiming to have Korean and Japanese collections for various product categories – especially clothing, shoes, and home decorations.

360Buy looks to be continuing its aggressive growth strategy into 2012 having confirmed that it’ll hire 25,000 new staffers during the course of this year.

[Source: DoNews – article in Chinese]