Rakuten to take 32.5% stake of fashion commerce site Stylife for $5.37M

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Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten (JSD:4755) announced today it would acquire Stylife (JDS:3037), one of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce sites. Stylife is currently listed on the JASDAQ market, a stock exchange for emerging companies, but will be delisted because Rakuten will take 32.5% of the fashion site’s stakes. Two of Stylife’s largest shareholders Burnedest Japan (female clothing) and Parco (a fashion department store) have approved of the acquisition, and will give the shares over to Rakuten.

Stylife was founded in May of 2000 as a subsidiary of Japan’s trading coporation Sojitsu [1]. It has been engaged in fierce competition against many rivals such as Zozotown, Fashion Walker, and Magaseek for some time now.

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Zozontown is leading the pack so far, although Fashion Walker was acquired by Japan’s largest clothing company World Co., Ltd in 2011. NTT DoCoMo recently announced it would subsidize Magaseek in order to expand the telco’s e-commerce revenue stream.


  1. It used to be Nichimen when Stylife was launched.  ↩