Foundation: 2013
Headquarters: Minato Ward, Tokyo
President: Shintaro Yamada
Executive Summary: Mercari is a Japanese e-commerce company founded in February 2013 by Shintaro Yamada and his colleagues. The company launched their Mercari app, which offered a fixed price customer-to-customer service, in Japan in July 2013 for iOS and Android devices. The app gained more than 50,000 new users within three weeks of launch. Mercari was designed for smartphones, allowing sellers and buyers to browse and shop from their own phones. This gave the company an edge over competitors and allowed customers without computer access to use the service. Mercari prides itself on its easy-to-use interface which allows people to list items within minutes following a quick photo and a brief written description. The app ensures security by holding payments sent to the seller until the buyer confirms the desired item has been delivered. In addition, buyers and sellers can remain anonymous for added security measures. Payments can be made easily using credit cards, or at convenience stores and bank ATMs. A year after launch, the user base grew to 4.5 million, with 100,000 items being listed daily and transactions reaching US$10 million a day. Due to its unprecedented growth, Japanese venture capital funds such as East Ventures, Global Brain Corporation, Globis Capital Partners, United Incorporated, and World Innovation Lab invested in the company. In September 2014, the company expanded and launched its service in the US market. Mercari was valued at over US$1 billion in 2016, becoming Japan’s first “unicorn” status startup. The status was given up, however, in June 2018 in order to go public on the stock market. Shares rose as high as ¥6,000, briefly valuing the company as high as US$7.4 billion. Since then, Mercari has been pursuing new services such as Instant Pay, Mercari Authenticate, and Merpay. In the second half of 2020, Mercari reported its first profits since going public. Its annual income is in the range of US$500 million.
