THE BRIDGE

tag Muse & Co

Japan’s Mixi acquires fashion commerce startup Muse&Co for $14.8 million

Takeshi Hirano Takeshi Hirano
SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) announced today that it will acquire membership-based fashion commerce company Muse&Co for 1.762 billion yen ($14.8 million). This means that Muse&Co will take a major step forward in as early as three years since its launch back in February of 2012. See also: Japanese fashion commerce site Muse＆Co passes $1M in monthly sales Japanese fashion startup Muse & Co raises $3.4 million Muse&Co has successfully brought the flash sales method to the mobile commerce space, seeing a monthly revenue ranging from several hundred thousand US dollars in as soon as a year since launch. Mixi said in a statement that this acquisition will contribute to their smart device businesses in terms of sharing expertise for service operations. This is because about 80% of user traffic for the fashion commerce service comes from smartphone users. Translated by Masaru Ikeda Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

mixi-museandco_logos

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese internet company Mixi (TSE:2121) announced today that it will acquire membership-based fashion commerce company Muse&Co for 1.762 billion yen ($14.8 million). This means that Muse&Co will take a major step forward in as early as three years since its launch back in February of 2012.

See also:

Muse&Co has successfully brought the flash sales method to the mobile commerce space, seeing a monthly revenue ranging from several hundred thousand US dollars in as soon as a year since launch.

Mixi said in a statement that this acquisition will contribute to their smart device businesses in terms of sharing expertise for service operations. This is because about 80% of user traffic for the fashion commerce service comes from smartphone users.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Related news

  1. Japan’s Mixi acquires P2P ticket marketplace TicketCamp for $95.5 million
  2. Japanese fashion startup Muse & Co raises $3.4 million
  3. Japanese fashion commerce giant Zozotown acquires DIY shop startup Stores.jp

Japanese fashion commerce site Muse＆Co passes $1M in monthly sales

Takeshi Hirano Takeshi Hirano
SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013 On day one of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto, I had a chance to speak with Hirotake Kubo, the CEO of Japanese fashion flash-sale commerce site Muse&Co. The startup was launched back in 2012, and raised 350 million yen (approximately $3.4 million) from several Japanese investment companies including Infinity Venture Partners back in May. According to Kubo, their monthly sales are now almost double what they were a half year ago, and have reached 100 million yen ($1 million). The Bridge: Your company has grown rapidly in the last half year. What happened? Kubo: We were only providing flash sale services, but it might not have been interesting enough for users. So we added curated content about fashion, and this helped us improve our conversion rate among our users. The Bridge: Adding curated content is not such a unique strategy to build a userbase. What was the key? Kubo: A list of items recommended by other users will not have such a great impact. So we used celebrities and asked them to recommend their favorite items on our site….

hirotake-kubo_at-ivs-2013-kyoto

See the original story in Japanese.

This is part of our coverage of the Infinity Ventures Summit Kyoto 2013

On day one of the Infinity Ventures Summit 2013 in Kyoto, I had a chance to speak with Hirotake Kubo, the CEO of Japanese fashion flash-sale commerce site Muse&Co. The startup was launched back in 2012, and raised 350 million yen (approximately $3.4 million) from several Japanese investment companies including Infinity Venture Partners back in May.

According to Kubo, their monthly sales are now almost double what they were a half year ago, and have reached 100 million yen ($1 million).

The Bridge: Your company has grown rapidly in the last half year. What happened?

Kubo: We were only providing flash sale services, but it might not have been interesting enough for users. So we added curated content about fashion, and this helped us improve our conversion rate among our users.

The Bridge: Adding curated content is not such a unique strategy to build a userbase. What was the key?

Kubo: A list of items recommended by other users will not have such a great impact. So we used celebrities and asked them to recommend their favorite items on our site. But consumers are very smart and will only buy items if they are good. So we carefully choose people who recommend good items, and we’re not so much focused on selling our products through that effort.

museco_screenshot

The Bridge: This kind of editorial operation is expensive I’m sure. How are your finances doing?

Kubo: I think they’re reasonable. Our editorial flow is not complete. We’re outsourcing the work, and managing it at all times with consideration of how to get better results for our money.

The Bridge: Can you share any specific growth figures?

Kubo: Our userbase keeps growing 15% every month. We have 30,000 monthly downloads of our mobile app and 40,000 new visitors on desktop. The growth rate more than doubled that of half a year ago.

The Bridge: What about the number of brands on site, and the number of users?

Kubo: We’re serving almost 1,000 brands to 400,000 users right now.

The Bridge: How much more sales you can expect to see?

Kubo: Our competitors are making around 5 billion yen ($50 million). So we can probably reach 400 million yen ($4 million) on a monthly basis.

The Bridge: Any idea on how to achieve that milestone?

Kubo: I have something in my mind, but I can’t disclose it. One thing I can share is that we’re looking to get our service out of the flash commerce business. Flash commerce helps us trigger potential customers, but we need to keep providing them with trending items at all times.

The Bridge: Thanks for talking with us!

Fashion magazine-style curated content can go a long way to helping users find things they like where a simple text search will not work. So I believe some media entities will launch e-commerce platforms in the near future, which may give consumers better accessibility to a wide variety of eye-catching items.

Related news

  1. Japanese classifieds site Jmty.jp looks for light at the end of the tunnel
  2. Japanese fashion coordination site iQON surpasses 1 million users
  3. Infinity Venture Partners, global fashion e-commerce company invest in joint venture

Japanese fashion startup Muse & Co raises $3.4 million

Takeshi Hirano Takeshi Hirano
SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Here’s more news from Japan’s fashion commerce space. Apparel-focused, flash marketing startup Muse & Co has announced that it has raised series B funding worth 350 million yen, or about $3.4 million. Investors include Itochu Technology Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and Infinity Ventures Partners (IVP). According to IVP’s managing partner Masashi Kobayashi, this round brings the total money raised by the startup to a sum of approximately 500 million yen ($5 million). Previously, IVP invested in the startup back in May of 2012. Consumers love fashion startups To see a seed-stage startup fundraise such a huge amount, it reminds us that there’s a real trend emerging at the intersection of fashion, e-commerce, and smartphones. Some of our readers will remember, for example, mobile commerce startup Origami also raised about the same amount last month. Muse & Co is a members-only flash sale site that gives users a substantial discount off the market price for a limited time. In Japan, there are some similar sites in this space. Gilt Groupe has been operating a joint venture with Softbank since 2008. Other competitors include Glamour Sales, Brands for Friends, and Monoco. According to startup’s CEO Hirotake…

スクリーンショットトップ画面

See the original story in Japanese.

Here’s more news from Japan’s fashion commerce space. Apparel-focused, flash marketing startup Muse & Co has announced that it has raised series B funding worth 350 million yen, or about $3.4 million. Investors include Itochu Technology Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and Infinity Ventures Partners (IVP).

According to IVP’s managing partner Masashi Kobayashi, this round brings the total money raised by the startup to a sum of approximately 500 million yen ($5 million). Previously, IVP invested in the startup back in May of 2012.

Consumers love fashion startups

To see a seed-stage startup fundraise such a huge amount, it reminds us that there’s a real trend emerging at the intersection of fashion, e-commerce, and smartphones. Some of our readers will remember, for example, mobile commerce startup Origami also raised about the same amount last month.

Muse & Co is a members-only flash sale site that gives users a substantial discount off the market price for a limited time. In Japan, there are some similar sites in this space. Gilt Groupe has been operating a joint venture with Softbank since 2008. Other competitors include Glamour Sales, Brands for Friends, and Monoco.

According to startup’s CEO Hirotake Kubo, Muse & Co targets the so-called ‘F1 layer’ in Japan (female users in their 20s and early 30s), thus differentiating from conventional competitors. In terms of differentiation from similar smartphones services, they expect to showcase items in the casual fashion category, which may be not so sophisticated but better suited to wearing on a day-to-day basis.

Over $500,000 in monthly sales, 70% traffic from mobile

Muse & Co sells merchandise on commission and has no inventory stocked at all. They showcase clothes from three brands every day, and in total about 30 new items are sold every day. The duration of the flash sale is usually about seven days, but most items sell out on the first day. Their flash marketing starts at 8pm every day, the peak time for user traffic.

e0016222bc50ffaec8616c9e57825327

Kubo explains that the site’s monthly revenue has reached around 50 million yen, with 50% coming from mobile, and 20% from the smartphone app. They’ve never made any promotion efforts for smartphone users, so it’s not unlikely that these access metrics (in terms of mobile/desktop ratio) are common for most e-commerce sites in Japan.

A good start

Muse & Co was established back in February of 2012. The startup’s founder, Hirotake Kubo, previously worked at global consulting firm AT Kearney, where he has been conducting due diligence on the apparel industry for five years.

From my experience seeing the apparel industry, I wanted to help domestic fashion brands solve the problems they’re facing. Beyond that, I also want to contribute to the strengthening of our economy.

Currently Muse & Co is 20-person team including 5 merchandising staffers. They have acquired approximately 200,000 users since launch, and are hoping to surpass 1 million users in the near future.

Related news

  1. Japanese fashion commerce site Muse＆Co passes $1M in monthly sales
  2. Japan’s Mixi acquires fashion commerce startup Muse&Co for $14.8 million
  3. Japanese fashion e-commerce service Laso raises $2.1M from DCM

Recent Articles

Trends