Struggling Rakuten fights back with a new kind of shopping app

Flea markets have found new favor in apps. Photo credit: Theo Offers.

Just over a year after Japan’s Rakuten experimented with a flea market app in its home country, the struggling ecommerce titan is now expanding the spin-off app to new markets.

Rakuma, which allows people to sell unwanted stuff, is separate from Rakuten’s main marketplace site. Rakuten announced this afternoon that Rakuma’s first expansion market is Taiwan.

It’s the first part of a pivot to a different kind of online store.

Rakuten says Taiwan is “a priority market” for its global strategy. The firm already has the Rakuten Ichiba ecommerce store, the Rakuten Card credit card, and the Rakuten Travel portal operating on the island.

The news comes a few weeks after Rakuten said it will be shutting down its Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia ecommerce sites this month, resulting in 150 layoffs. Part of that plan is for the Amazon-esque site to be replaced by the eBay-like Rakuma app.

Today’s Taiwan launch for Rakuma seems to be the first part of that pivot to a different kind of online store. It’s also confirmation that Rakuten has lost conventional ecommerce in Southeast Asia to fast-growing rivals like Rocket Internet’s Lazada, which is an Amazon clone.

Flea market apps have blossomed in Japan and across Southeast Asia in the past few years, with startups like Carousell, Shopee, and Duriana growing rapidly and attracting VC investment in this niche. Singapore-based Carousell, which ventured into Taiwan in 2014, might be Rakuma’s most feisty and fighty rival in Taiwan. Carousell has received funding from Rakuten Ventures.