San Jose, California, 2016-May-13 — /EPR Retail News/ — Under the agreement, Gmarket will launch a flagship store on Rakuten Ichiba – its Japanese platform – featuring boutique shops that will offer Korean fashion and beauty products to Rakuten’s membership base of more than 100 million users.
eBay Korea’s Gmarket has joined forces with Japan’s largest internet mall Rakuten to benefit sellers in both countries.
At initial launch, this will include 200 items of women’s fashion and 100 items of Korean small- and medium-sized cosmetic brands.
Rakuten will launch a similar service on Gmarket’s curated ecommerce service G9, offering Korean consumers the opportunity to purchase unique merchandise from Rakuten’s extensive lineup of Japanese merchants.
Both companies expect the product line-ups to increase over the coming months.
Rakuten and eBay Korea will provide sellers with translation, listings, merchandising and customer support services.
The retailers will also support each other by providing fulfilment centre warehouse space and delivery solutions in their respective home countries. When a consumer purchases a product on their local site, the order will be processed in a fulfillment centre in the merchant’s home country and products will be delivered directly to the consumer.
Henry Chun, head of Gmarket, and Masato Takahashi, managing executive officer of Rakuten, attended the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony in Tokyo.
“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,” Chun explained.
Takahashi said the agreement was another step toward active cross-border trading for merchants – small and large – in both countries.
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