Thread: Want A Front Row Seat To Watch a Train Wreck?

Nice, will be waiting for the day with 70% off their best selling products to resell them

Is there anyway to profit from this ?

To AgonI's point, eventually there will be a liquidation event. The buy.com domain name has serious equity, but that will probably be lost in the (eventual) bankruptcy to the largest debtor(s). However, when retailers start their death spiral, there will be inventory sold below cost for a while to try and meet finance demands.

Originally Posted by Vigilante

2. Dropping the Buy.com name and address. What could they have gone to that is more significant, impactful, and screams retail more than the domain name Buy.com, you ask?

Rakuten.com.

Seems quite a number of Japanese companies buying out major US firms recently....ie Softbank's purchase of Sprint is another example.
But you are right - not seeing the sense in this particular rebranding....

Originally Posted by Vigilante

Rakuten.com

They were purchased by Rakuten about 2 years ago...Rakuten as a conglomerate is MUCH bigger than Buy.com ever was, and they're using Buy.com to round out their global presence (Rakuten has purchased some of the largest online retailers around the world in recent years).

Rakuten's parent company has a $13B market cap... I think it's safe to say that Rakuten.com will not be out of business in 2014.

Ass clowns. Probably MBA's.

Actually, both the CEO and COO are attorneys.

I'm surprised they waited this long to change the name. They bought them in 2010 ($250M). The article I read said the change of name is because they believe it is necessary "to establish the Japanese brand internationally". Hmmm... now are the getting rid of the buy.com name completely (selling it) or are they going to automatically forward to the new domain name. Nevertheless, it doesn't yet make sense.

Buy.com had an 8.07% growth rate in 2011, selling about $805 million. Not sure about 2012 numbers but they seem strong still.

Originally Posted by JScott

(Rakuten has purchased some of the largest online retailers around the world in recent years).

I'm curious about this so I'll look into some more but I wonder have any of them been as large as buy.com and did they also change the name of those?

Originally Posted by JScott

Actually, both the CEO and COO are attorneys.

Sigh. Here we go again.

Actually,

Chairman and CEO
Hiroshi Mikitani
Mr. Mikitani received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Director and Vice President Executive Officer
Atsushi Kunishige
Mr. Kunishige received his MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

CFO
Ken Takayama
Mr. Takayama holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Senior Executive Officer and Director
Kazunori Takeda
Mr. Takeda holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Senior Executive Officer and Director
Yoshihisa Yamada
Mr. Yamada holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Your Wikipedia search caused me to do three minutes worth of research to correct you that I will never get back.

I'm sure they will redirect the buy.com traffic to their new domain name, but the buy.com name will be mothballed.

Someone missed the fact that Americans would rather buy from buy.com than from a Japanese company that wants their Japanese brand to become important in the United States.

Buy.com was all about the domain name. Aside from that, their site isn't that great. Never has been. They just won the race to the domain registrar.

They sure pissed away hundreds of millions in brand building over the years just to change the name to rabguptartfi.com

Originally Posted by Vigilante

Someone missed the fact that Americans would rather buy from buy.com than from a Japanese company that wants their Japanese brand to become important in the United States.

Buy.com was all about the domain name. Aside from that, their site isn't that great. Never has been. They just won the race to the domain registrar.

I've never been impressed with buy.com. Never bought anything from them.

Originally Posted by Kak

They sure pissed away hundreds of millions in brand building over the years just to change the name to rabguptartfi.com


Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

Lol true

Originally Posted by Vigilante

Someone missed the fact that Americans would rather buy from buy.com than from a Japanese company that wants their Japanese brand to become important in the United States.

This. I mean, seriously, how can you make a decision like that? I'm not living in the U.S. so I never used or even thought about using buy.com, but from what I read here, in other articles, etc, they had it hard enough before this decision (competition vs amazon mainly). Really stupid.

We actually had a similar situation in Germany a few years ago where Rakuten bought a German company similar to buy.com and shortly after changed the name to rakuten.de. I don't remember the name of the company or how it all turned out, but will check it and report back.

Edit: It was called tradoria before so they didn't kill so much domain equity as with buy.com. They also renamed quickly after the takeover. Don't have time to research how the business developed compared to before the takeover, but I guess in the german case it actually improved.

Here's a infographic that kinda describes their philosophy pretty good:

Originally Posted by theag

This. I mean, seriously, how can you make a decision like that? I'm not living in the U.S. so I never used or even thought about using buy.com, but from what I read here, in other articles, etc, they had it hard enough before this decision (competition vs amazon mainly). Really stupid.

We actually had a similar situation in Germany a few years ago where Rakuten bought a German company similar to buy.com and shortly after changed the name to rakuten.de. I don't remember the name of the company or how it all turned out, but will check it and report back.

Edit: It was called tradoria before so they didn't kill so much domain equity as with buy.com. They also renamed quickly after the takeover. Don't have time to research how the business developed compared to before the takeover, but I guess in the german case it actually improved.

Here's a infographic that kinda describes their philosophy pretty good:

This may prove to be an ignorant statement, but I'm not sure I'd like to empower Japan.

Why the protectionist views? I guarantee that you own many things made in Japan. I am going to buy the best product for my money. Asian countries make better cars than the US for example. Why would I buy a Chevy when I can get a Toyota or Nissan?

Originally Posted by Kak

Why would I buy a Chevy

Have you seen the new 2014 Corvette Stingray? Oh my.

Originally Posted by Kak

Asian countries make better cars than the US for example.

Finally, you and I have something to spar about. The mere fact that they make things cheaper does not mean that they make things better.