Japan’s Rakuten and Korea’s Gmarket sign cross-border trading deal

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Feb 24, 2016

Two internet retailers, Rakuten from Japan and Gmarket from Korea, have signed an agreement to boost cross-border trading amongst merchants in both countries.

As part of the partnership, Gmarket will launch an online flagship store on Rakuten’s Ichiba platform, offering diverse Korean fashion and beauty products to an estimated 100 million Rakuten users. The initiative will begin with 200 items of women’s fashion and 100 items of Korean small and medium-sized cosmetic brands.

Simultaneously, Rakuten will launch an online flagship store on Gmarket and offer products on its curated commerce service G9. From the broad variety of products offered by the more than 44,000 merchants on Rakuten in Japan, Korean consumers will enjoy products such as beauty, toys, hobby items and sporting goods.

Services such as translation, listings, merchandising advice and customer support will be provided to participating merchants by the two retailers. When a consumer purchases a product on their local site, the order will be processed in a designated fulfillment center in the country where the merchant is located and products will be delivered directly to the consumer.

“As the demand for Korean apparel and cosmetic products is rising rapidly in Japan, we decided to join forces with Rakuten in order to introduce the diverse products of Gmarket sellers to Japanese consumers,” said Henry Chun, Head of Gmarket. “The deal will pave the way for Korean small fashion and cosmetic brands who have been struggling to introduce their unique, high-quality products to consumers worldwide, to increase their exports to Japan.”

The deal comes two weeks after Rakuten announced it would shut its offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.