Rakuten confirms it is shutting its US online retail store, originally known as Buy.com, over the next two months; Rakuten bought Buy.com for $250M in 2010
Context & Ripple Effects
Rakuten's US retail exit closes a decade-long attempt to buy its way into American e-commerce: the company paid $250M for Buy.com-era ambitions back in 2010 and kept acquiring — PopSugar at a reported $580M in 2015, the pickup startup Curbside in 2018 — without building a durable storefront.
What survives is the partnership layer rather than the store itself. The 2018 Walmart–Rakuten tie-up put Kobo devices and a Japan grocery service on each side's platform, and by early 2021 Walmart had become an investor in Rakuten's $2.2B share issuance alongside Tencent and Japan Post.
First-order effects
- US merchants and shoppers on Rakuten's US marketplace lose their storefront within two months, ending a ten-year run since the $250M Buy.com acquisition.
- Kobo's US distribution, which ran through the Walmart–Rakuten retail partnership, needs a new home now that the store selling it is closing.
Second-order effects
- Walmart's relationship with Rakuten shifts from retail counterparty to capital partner — it holds equity from the 2021 raise while Rakuten's remaining US-facing commerce runs through Ichiba, where Walmart already lists 1,200 branded products.
- The Curbside pickup technology and other US acquisitions lose their flagship retail surface, leaving them as licensing or integration assets rather than owned channels.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, foreign retailers competing head-on in US e-commerce give way to equity stakes and cross-listing deals — owning inventory infrastructure in America proves harder than buying traffic or shelf space.
- US online retail consolidates further around domestic incumbents as would-be challengers retreat to their home markets and sell access instead.
The trend: Cross-border e-commerce players are abandoning direct US storefronts in favor of partnerships and equity investments, with Rakuten's Buy.com shutdown marking the end of the buy-in-and-compete era.