Yahoo Japan

Yahoo! Japan Auctions for the Japanese market is still the top Japanese auctions site for many reasons. Although Yahoo! has a collaboration with ebay in the name of a joint Japanese Auctions site called the SEKAIMON, yet the monopoly of Yahoo! Japan auctions in the Japanese psyche is still unparalleled. The reason behind is obvious. Yahoo! has emerged victorious in winning the trust of the Japanese market from the very beginning, and has not lost it for a day.

Yahoo! japan auctions had a separate Yahoo! Japan in English launched on October 10, 2008, but eventually this English version was completely withdrawn on September 2009. In fact, the auctions homepage language of Yahoo! Japan auctions was changed permanently from English to Japanese on September 2009 in an obvious effort to further fortify the Japanese trust connection. The presence of SEKAIMON also only added as a popularity tool for Yahoo! Japan auctions and further added to the confidence of the Japanese buyers and sellers on them.

Yahoo! Japan auctions presently sell a variety of items. Although the site is not available in English, yet sites like ours act as mediators between the Japanese language and the English language. The aim of our site is to assist the non-Japanese vernacular crowd that uses English as the auction medium. The most popular items on Yahoo! Japan can be classified under the following categories.

1. Computer and Electronics: Desktops and Laptops (windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP) equipped and peripherals like LCD monitor printer, CPUs ( Intel core, Intel premium, Intel Celeron, Intel XEON), Hard drives (SATA, SSD, HDD), Motherboard (ASUS, GIGA BYTE, MSI, INTEL), and additional memory hardware like DDR and DDR2 ram. Not only hardware, software like Norton Antivirus 8.0 and 10.0 can also be found. Under the rare exhibitions category MAC Pc is also available. Apart from this computer domain names and pocket computers are available with their separate component parts and accessories.

Almost all kinds of electronics items like the TV, Compact cameras, Digital SLR, Sony walkmans, iPods, Camcorders, power adaptors and also consumer electronics items like refrigerators, cleaners, Washers and cooking appliances are available. Rare audio equipments like antique audio equipment with radio are also to be found. Browse through our product categories to find the appliance you are looking for.

1. Music: Classic and contemporary exist in harmony in the music category.

Classic records like the Beatles , Pink Floyd, Paul Morgan mood music, rare Joao Gilberto, Signature Schruricht and Backhaus along with Enka Karaoke, Hibari Misora, Fuyumi Sakamoto, Sayuri Ishikawa, Kiku-Masamune are available.

1. Comics, magazines and movies: The comics and magazines category holds categories like children’s books, language learning books, fashion magazine (old and new), and good old comics. For finding rare good anime movies by categories and also anime music collection, search through the comics categories.
2. Hobbies and antiques: Many hobby items like guitar, radio controlled miniature helicopter, Teddies, Character toys, rare puzzles, gaming consoles, antique Imari, rare flight student ticket application before the war, Green laser pointer pens, S sized Kukui, Jissen simple numbers special mysteries are available. Antique items like iron teapot kettle and crockery items, Antique royal road crockery are also available on Yahoo! Japan auctions. Disney rare mickey mouse posters and photos. Rare collectibles like Gramophone records, stamps , coins, first day covers. Rare mineral samples and fossils can also be found on Yahoo! Japan.
3. Fashion and accessories: The fashion and accessories categories of Yahoo! Japan auctions is worth special mention. You can find almost anything fashionable- Denims, coats, sneakers, T shirts, kidz items, luxury watches, branded bags (Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, Hermes, C Dior, Prada), jewelry, eco friendly items and other accessories are to be found.
4. Automotives: All kinds of used and new car accessories can be found. Most popular are items like the winter tires, navigation systems, motorcycle body kits and car body kits of all well known brands, headlights and tail lights among other car parts can be found.
5. Only for little babies: Perhaps the best feature of Yahoo! Auctions Japan is that it keeps a myriad of beautiful baby items. Mother’s bags, baby perambulators, baby furniture, Hello kitty bath chair, Walkers, strollers and memorabilia like albums are beautifully hosted on Yahoo! Japan.
6. Beauty care items: Beauty care items from all renowned brands covering all types of beauty care needs.
7. Flowers and gardening: Room plants, gardening instruments, rare flowers like the Black Christmas rose, Pink Hepatica species YAmaki bud, Hepatica Blooming wild grass  bring out the most beautiful-Japan and heavenly fragrance to Yahoo! Japan auctions.

Ebay Japan had always been a critical turf for ebay. In fact, the world’s premiere internet auctions company failed majorly in its primary business expansion plans in Japan. Their then main competitor Yahoo Japan auctions always managed to take the lead among Japanese participants of the online auction trade. Ebay Japan remained solely operational in Japan only for a short period during the dot-com boom (2000-2001). In March 2002, Ebay Japan completely withdrew from the Japanese market, by accepting a $1.2 billion charge and completely closing any business transactions in the Japanese market. This seemed the only option left for ebay Japan as the world’s second largest e-commerce  geography in Japan only allowed a meager 25, 000 listings to the company, a number far less than the listings of Yahoo Japan Auctions.

For ebay Japan, two prime factors mainly contributed to this humiliating Japanese debacle of the online auction giant.  The first factor was a launch-time-lag of 5 months and the second factor was Ebay Japan decided to charge a commission of 1.25% to 5% on each transaction, which Yahoo Japan auctions never bothered to do. Corporate gossips attributed the then CEO of ebay Japan, Merle Okawara, of being insufficient in understanding the criticalities of the internet market. Ebay Chief executive and President Meg Whitman summarized the Japanese debacle of ebay Japan when she confessed, “We’re definitely in catch-up mode.”

Yahoo Japan auctions on the other hand always maintained a considerable lead in the Japanese e-business. Yahoo Japan auctions started operating in 1999, with only initial staff strength of 120 people. Within June 2001, Yahoo’s site found 2.2 million Japanese users buying and selling various different items. Ebay Japan found itself perplexed and trying different business tactics to gain the audience attention, none of which succeeded to show business results.

Moreover, ebay Japan’s usual policy of word-of-the-mouth advertising also did not see any profit, because the site failed to understand the general Japanese psyche. By the time ebay Japan incorporated the changes in its website, Yahoo Japan had already overleaped it. Yahoo Japan auctions had by then secured its presence by a 95% share of the Japanese market, leaving only a meager 3% for ebay Japan.

Yahoo Japan auctions is immensely popular in Japan, in absence of any competitors and is nicknamed YAFU OKU by the Japanese. Yahoo Japan started the operations in September 2009 and was rewarded with a monopoly success in the Japanese market. This Japanese success was so overwhelming, that the Santa Clara company decided recently to make the Yahoo Japan site available only in Japanese language from September 30, 2009.

Although people outside Japan often refer to Yahoo Japan Auctions as ebay Japan, yet it is an ironical misnomer as ebay Japan had to withdraw from the market in the face of a monopoly Yahoo market. Nevertheless, ebay also tried to get their business done by building in affiliations with Yahoo!.  A CNBC news of 2001 reported that Yahoo! and Ebay Japan were discussing a 50/50 merger in Japan, but that never took shape understandably because Yahoo Japan had enough dominance not to consider any merger of any sort.

However, things took a different turn in 2006 when ebay (not ebay Japan) and Yahoo Japan started a common Japanese site called Sekaimon or the ‘gateway to the world’ to assist Yahoo! Japan users to bid for overseas ebay items. Yahoo! auctions reasoned that this step was directed to bring in more ‘cross-border trading’ of the online auctions scenario. Ebay CEO Meg Whitman resounded this business excitement and asserted that this deal will let the ‘localized site’ offer more ‘ease and convenience’ to the Japanese buyers and sellers. Apart from Yahoo! and Ebay, another company called the Shop airlines also participated in the deals, offering services of site management, payment transparency and item shipping.

This 2007 alliance of Yahoo! and Ebay in Japan actually followed from a similar 2006 alliance in the US. According to this 2006 San Francisco deal the two companies agreed to aid each other in online advertising, payment transactions and business communications. The acquisition of paypal inc. by ebay added as an additional business reason for Yahoo! to get into the business deal with ebay. However, since paypal is not so much popular with Japanese customers, the joint business site ‘SEKAIMON’ lets the customers buy the items using credit card.

SEKAIMON mainly serves as a platform for the US seller to sell their items to the Japanese buyer. The regulations of this site require the Japanese buyer to pay a commission for the ‘handling cost’ of the item over the usual cost of the item. Like Yahoo! Japan auctions, SEKAIMON is also solely available in Japanese and the only way for a non-Japanese customer is to use the web translation tool from Japanese to English or other languages.

Yahoo Japan Auctions, our main bid system….