Rakuten
, a Japan-based international e-Commerce company, unveiled the winners of its annual Shop of the Year (SOY) Awards which is designed to praise the best merchants out of 44 nominations across 12 categories.
The award ceremony, held during the company’s annual Rakuten Expo West, aims to motivate Rakuten merchants with incentives for their hard work and success throughout the year. Results are based on year-end performance data that focuses mainly on total number of orders, feedback ratings, gross sales and fulfillment excellence.
Winners of the 2014 SOY Awards include:
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- Shop of the Year: Adorama Camera
- Product of the Year – Non Technology: BestChoiceProducts
- Best New Merchant – Non-Technology: USA Retail Store
- Best in Fashion, Health & Beauty: VapoBuy
- Best in Customer Satisfaction: Vacuum-Direct
“We had great variety of winners this year,” said Bernard Luthi, CMO of Rakuten, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Even some new merchants who arrived on the scene in 2014 built their Rakuten businesses quickly through aggressive use of our marketing tools and through partnership with our account management team.”
DealFisher, a daily deal web site specializing in refurbished electronics and computer products, is one of the few new Rakuten merchants that experienced significant success in 2013. The company came away winning the two categories it was nominated for — “Best New Product” and “Best New Merchant – Electronics” — due to its extensive customer support program that involves highly skilled electronics experts who can answer any and all technical questions customers.
“We were able to single ourselves out because of our focus on refurbished products, and offering these types of products in a way that creates positive responses with customers,” said Ari Marino, Director of Sales for DealFisher, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Refurbished products used to have ‘a bad name’ due to the misconception that all refurbished products are of poor quality. Our warranties, along with our customer service, help educate the customer while making their experience positive.”
The ability to have full control over how many items DealFisher could sell through Rakuten — and the power to offer any deal or promotion, at any time — played a major factor in the company’s overall success, according to Marino.
“When we first opened an account with Rakuten, we could never have imagined or anticipated the amount of success we were able to achieve through having a virtual marketplace,” Marino said. “We were empowered to continuously post deals and promotions in order to promote growth, while other virtual marketplaces would restrict our funds and restrict our product listings due to the amount of growth we were seeing.”
Luthi added: “DealFisher offered a great strategic deals on very cool products, but they also put work into maintaining their fully-customizable Rakuten shop, which help with conversion and building loyalty.”
