all in english for rakuten

All in English for Rakuten – Target or just a dream?

Writing for the world place – Fall 2011

s1170267 Nguyen Tat Thang

Content

• Big Name: Rakuten

• Globalization

• Roadmap

• Bold decision for Japanese Company

Big Name

• Rakuten: the biggest online shopping mall in Japan in present.

• Rakuten's 2010 revenues were $4.2 billion (JPY 346.1 billion) with operating profits of approximately $782M (JPY 63.7 billion), suggesting 18.6% gross profit.

Globalization

Fast retailing* net sale (billion yen) (left)

Rakuten net sale (billion yen) (left)

Fast retailing ratio of overseas sales to net sales (percents) (right)

* Fast retailing: operator of Uniqlo casual clothing store chain. Both Fast retailing and Rakuten is relatively young.

Globalization

• Rakuten has opened offices in a numerous Asian country, Europe and the US.

• It make headlines just today with the $250M acquisition of Buy.com, a California- based shopping portal with a large American and European customer base.

Roadmap

• The captain:

Hiroshi Mikitani – has MBA

from Harvard.

• President Mikitani is fluent in

English and is very charismatic,

analysts say.

Roadmap

Cafeteria go fist: make menu English

All meeting with foreigner customer will be English

All internal meetings will be in English whether foreigners are present or not.

2012

All employee can’t use English efficiently will be fired

English become official language

Bold decision for Japanese Company

• Problem of English with Japanese.• Average TOEFL test score:

India – 84 Japan – 65

Bangladesh – 83 Germany – 97

France – 88

Reference

• http://asiajin.com/blog/2010/05/21/english-please-rakuten-bans-japanese-as-corporate-language-from-internal-meetings/• http://fukumimi.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/rakut

en-launches-english-language-site-sort-of/

• http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20100716f1.html

• http://injapan.gaijinpot.com/2010/07/20/rakutens-decision-on-english-not-welcomed/