Rakuten acquires fashion marketplace app Fril

Rakuten’s café in the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

Via Japan Today:

Rakuten Inc has acquired a 100% stake in Fablic, provider of FRIL, a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace mobile app and has made the company a wholly-owned subsidiary. The acquisition price is undisclosed.

The C2C e-commerce market continues to shift toward mobile services that make buying and selling simpler. Japan is also seeing an increase in popularity in C2C marketplace platforms that make it possible to buy and sell speedily and at predetermined prices, as well as a transition away from auction services that involve a bidding process. FRIL was launched as Japan’s first C2C marketplace mobile app in July 2012, and since then has been steadily growing its user base, with cumulative downloads of the app now exceeding 5 million.

Rakuten’s operating profit fell 12 percent in the first half of 2016. Its domestic ecommerce is particularly struggling with profit down 25 percent in the second quarter. While it may be losing some style in selling goods online, Rakuten’s financial businesses are healthy.

Early this year Rakuten shut down its Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia marketplaces. By combining its consumer-to-consumer marketplace service Rakuma with Fril, Rakuten will take on the leader in the space, Mercari. According to the Japan Times, Mercari is doing nearly US$100 million in monthly transactions in Japan and recently enjoyed a spike in downloads in the US where it climbed to number three in overall app rankings.