Rakuten France will close by year-end after failing to find a buyer. Active customers fell 33% since 2016. Pixmania's CEO questions the sales process.
Rakuten France is closing at the end of the year. The online marketplace, which the Japanese e-commerce group bought in 2010 for €200 million, said it failed to find a buyer after months of talks.
The platform had been shopping for a buyer since May, after traffic and sales dropped sharply. Active customers fell 33% since 2016. Traffic dropped 42% over the same period. The company warned in May that it would shut down before year-end if a sale fell through.
Several parties expressed interest. Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, the founder of PriceMinister – the French marketplace Rakuten acquired and rebranded – prepared a bid in June. Casino, Carrefour, Pixmania and Back Market were also mentioned as potential buyers.
None of them worked out. “Despite the efforts made by the group to complete a sale of the business, the extensive discussions held with potential buyers did not lead to a viable solution,” the company told French newspaper Le Figaro.
Management said potential buyers could not meet criteria including job preservation, financial terms and long-term viability. The site is also closing in Spain, since the two markets share the same operating structure.
Pixmania is questioning the process. “One can legitimately wonder if the sales process was biased,” said Jean-Émile Rosenblum, CEO and co-founder of Pixmania. “It seems that from the outset, they knew they wanted to close the company in France rather than sell it. We believe they used us to be able to close it legally.”
Rakuten France strongly denied the accusation. The company pointed to job preservation as a key factor in its decision. Pixmania had planned to retain only a third of the workforce.
The closure marks the end of a decade-long effort to challenge Amazon in France. Rakuten paid €200 million for PriceMinister in 2010. By 2016, the unit's value had been written down to €65 million – about a third of the purchase price.
Rakuten's CRRFY stock page shows an Alpha Score of 66, with a Moderate label in the Consumer Defensive sector.
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.