{"id":378,"date":"2013-03-20T01:40:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T16:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tciskfactory.com\/wp\/?p=378"},"modified":"2026-10-29T16:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:30:40","slug":"post-378","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/2013\/03\/20\/post-378\/","title":{"rendered":"With the wholesale e-commerce market booming, will Japan's unique and isolated e-commerce market also change?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zencart\"For years, I've been meaning to do it, but I kept putting it off, and several years have passed. But finally, I've started working on ZenCart, a high-performance shopping cart system for online shops (finally!). In Japan, the e-commerce market, including Rakuten, is notoriously isolated, with many shops crowded together on web shopping malls, and a lot of rebates being siphoned off. Yet, there are still many web shops that can't give up their shops on Rakuten. The biggest attraction is Rakuten's brand power and the number of visitors (user traffic), but the system is so incredibly restrictive that it's frustrating. For buyers, Rakuten Market is great because it offers a wealth of events and other services, including points, making it fun and satisfying. But for sellers, frankly speaking, the RMS (Rakuten Market's dedicated store management system) doesn't have any attractive features at all. Well, it goes without saying, but Rakuten was amazing for being one of the first in Japan to build such a system.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the Japanese e-commerce market is about to start showing some changes?<\/p>\n

In recent years, the wholesale e-commerce market has become increasingly vibrant. Essentially, wholesalers have started selling products through websites. While it might be more accurate to say they are buyers, or rather, suppliers, it's not just anyone who buys. Many sites are membership-based, and while it varies from site to site, some require prior screening.<\/p>\n

\"denabtob\"<\/a>BtoB market (formerly NETSEA), operated by DeNA, is a marketplace for wholesale online shops, where numerous wholesalers sell a wide variety of products. Since sales are at wholesale prices, they are naturally cheaper than market prices. However, it is important to note that some products require purchase in bulk. To purchase products here, you need to register as a retailer beforehand, but individual business owners are also welcome, so the barrier to entry is not that high.<\/p>\n

\"rakutenbtob\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recently, Rakuten has also launched Rakuten B2B, a wholesale procurement site, to compete with this. Looking overseas, there is an e-commerce site called AliExpress in China, a major wholesale market. Depending on the product, purchasing from AliExpress literally means purchasing directly from the manufacturer. It's incredibly cheap! And because the products are shipped from China, shipping costs are also low, often cheaper than domestic shipping within Japan. Even though it's wholesale, you can purchase from just one item, and there are many items with free shipping.<\/p>\n

\"aliexpress\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The site appears to be multilingual, including Japanese, but it seems to be simply translated using machine translation software, so some parts are incomprehensible. Viewing in English or Chinese is essential. Points to note are that it can take quite a while to receive your order (some items may ship within 30 days of ordering), and there are concerns about product quality and risks. In case of any issues, you may need to communicate via message in English or Chinese.<\/p>\n

In any case, the wholesale web market is likely to become increasingly vibrant in the future.<\/p>\n

...If that happens, it's easy to imagine that the number of users of existing, regular web shopping malls like Rakuten will decline. In other words, users will learn how to shop more wisely. They will scrutinize and specialize in where they buy their products more than ever before. Even with websites, the real competition will ultimately come down to the online shops on their own sites. It has become necessary to wait for specialized users on e-commerce sites within their own websites, while being mindful of search engines. And that's where ZenCart, a GNU GPL (free software), comes in.<\/p>\n

This thing is super multi-functional! Looks like I'll be sleep-deprived for a while longer...<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I've been meaning to do it for a while, but I kept putting it off...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.coppe.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}