[Seminar Report] Rakuten Ichiba, Shopify, and Commerce Media Joint Seminar (Held on November 18, 2020)

Overview of the seminar

At this seminar, representatives from Rakuten and Shopify gave talks on a variety of topics, mainly explaining their own products.

[Agenda for the day]

1. Explanation of "Rakuten Market"
2. Shopify Explained
3. Commerce Media: Rakuten Ichiba and Shopify Case Studies & How to Utilize Sales Channels
4. Q&A

Rakuten explained what kind of e-commerce mall Rakuten Market is based on concrete figures, such as the current Rakuten economic sphere, the attributes of Rakuten Market users, and the market share of each category compared to other malls.

Shopify's Marketing Manager, Toyoda (@toyotamasan), took the stage and spoke about a wide range of topics, including the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify as an e-commerce platform, what types of companies are currently using Shopify, new features added in updates, and an explanation of the popular Shopify POS.

In our part, our CEO, Takahiro Izawa (@izawatakahiro), took to the stage and gave a preliminary explanation on how to link Rakuten Ichiba with Shopify, and why it is necessary to open a store on Rakuten Ichiba and to expand to multiple stores. We will introduce only a part of that in this article.

Speaker: Takahiro Izawa, CEO of Commerce Media

Why does Japanese e-commerce need multiple store expansion?

The market size of Japan's EC industry is said to be about 10 trillion yen (merchandise sales only), with 40% of this being in-house EC and the remaining 60% being EC malls. In addition, 40% of the in-house EC market includes catalog mail order, so the market size when looking at the Internet alone is actually a little lower.

Furthermore, the Japanese EC industry is characterized by little overlap in users, as each company's EC site and EC malls have their own commercial areas. This situation is likely the result of a combination of various factors, such as points and cashbacks available at EC malls, and novelties given only to customers who purchase from the company's EC site. In fact, when we checked the user overlap of one of our clients, the result was less than a few percent.

We occasionally receive consultations such as, "We've been making sales through the EC mall, but we want to switch to our own in-house EC site to improve our profit margins." However, abandoning the EC mall and moving to our own in-house EC site means starting our EC business over from scratch.

Of course, there are some aspects that will vary depending on the situation and the products, but in this type of market environment, if you want to increase sales, it becomes necessary to use both an EC mall and your own EC site.

Rakuten Ichiba and Shopify Case Studies & How to Use Sales Channels

Shopify is positioned as a multi-platform service, so it is designed to operate both an e-commerce mall and your own company's own website, and you can integrate with Rakuten Ichiba for free from the app store.

The major advantages are that it reduces the workload of operating two websites, and inventory management becomes easier as Rakuten orders are imported into Shopify.

Regarding actual implementation and integration, we have an article summarizing the steps, so please take a look at that.

[Introduction] Unify Shopify and Rakuten store management! Explanation of the Rakuten Ichiba sales channel app
[Integration] Unified store management for Shopify and Rakuten! Explanation of the Rakuten Ichiba Sales Channel App

In addition, this APP only copies products from Shopify to Rakuten, and does not link with products already registered on Rakuten Ichiba. Therefore, this APP is for those who have built an EC site with Shopify, but have not yet opened a store on Rakuten Ichiba.

If you are already running a Rakuten store and would like to use this app, you will need to either use it with products that are not yet listed, or delete or make private your registered Rakuten Ichiba products.

If you don't meet the above criteria but would like to expand to multiple stores, or if you would like to open stores on sites other than Rakuten, we recommend using an OMS (order management system). By managing order information with an OMS, it becomes easier to link with the warehouse's system (WMS), and depending on the OMS, it is even possible to automate shipping instructions.

Even if sales increase by expanding into multiple stores, if management and operation are complicated, it will inconvenience customers and strain the EC operations, so it is important to use this type of technology to improve efficiency.

Recently, EC has started to be recognized as an important channel for companies, and this trend is getting stronger and stronger. Therefore, in order to get your EC business on track without being overwhelmed in this era, it is important to understand the characteristics of your own EC and EC mall and create your own strategy.

I would be honored if this story could be of some help to you.

Questions and Answers Summary

Finally, we will list some of the questions we received after the seminar, and we hope that this will be useful for your e-commerce operations.

Question 1
I am currently doing EC on Shopify, but I am worried that if I were to enter the Rakuten market, I would have to compete on price. I would like to know how I can compete!

A: For example, there are various ways to compete, such as accepting delivery lead times until the very last minute or offering generous gifts. If you can't compete on price, you need to find a strength other than price. If you can't think of anything, you might want to ask a third party or consult with ECC or a consulting company.

Question 2
I would like some advice on SEO and increasing awareness for Shopify sites.

A: Shopify allows you to change the TD (title & description) and language structure for each page, making it easy to implement internal measures. Also, Shopify automatically creates structured data for your site with Theme and loads it into Google, so it is a platform that has the elements to improve your search ranking.