Rakuten acquires Japanese beauty portal to expand its own salon booking service

Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten today announced the acquisition of Beauty Collection, an online portal that connects users to more than 2,000 hair, nail, eyebrow, and relaxation salons across the country. The acquisition was made by purchasing 100 percent of outstanding shares in parent company Lubic, which also offers hair- and nail-focused apps for iOS and Android. Rakuten declined to divulge the purchase price.

Beauty Collection, founded in 2007, is based in Osaka. The service relies on phone bookings rather than online reservations. Rakuten launched Rakuten Salon in 2012, with an emphasis on helping customers find hair salons and book appointments via the web. The acquisition of Beauty Collection will aid Rakuten’s expansion into additional beauty services while exposing the budding service to 95 million existing Rakuten members.

“Rakuten will strive to further grow the user base and improve the convenience of the Beauty Collection and Rakuten Salon websites by harnessing their strengths, including respective customer bases and functions,” the company said in a statement, likely hinting that online bookings and Super Points will be integrated with the existing Beauty Collection service. A Rakuten spokesperson tells Tech in Asia that Beauty Collection and Rakuten Salon will continue to provide services under their respective brands and that plans for unification are currently undecided.

The acquisition is the latest in a busy year for Rakuten as the firm seeks to expand its influence beyond traditional ecommerce and compete with the likes of Amazon and Alibaba beyond the limited span of the Japanese archipelago. Rakuten purchased messaging service Viber in February, analytics firm DC Storm in May, and coupon service Ebates in September.

While likely a much less expensive buy than the above, Beauty Collection’s acquisition shows that Japan’s home-grown ecommerce juggernaut keeps tabs on even relatively small-scale businesses.

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