Leading Japanese e-retailer Rakuten is launching several new services designed to speed up and expand deliveries, including an ultra-fast ’20-minute delivery’ service.
In Tokyo, the company has launched ‘Rakubin’, an express delivery service that can deliver ordered goods in as little as 20 minutes in the districts of Shibuya, Meguro, Setagaya and Minato.
Through Rakubin, users can purchase approximately 450 product items, including convenience store goods, such as soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and snacks, and drugstore goods, as well as top-ranking products on its leading Rakuten Ichiba portal, and sweets and coffee available at Rakuten CAFE.
By setting the address of the user registered under the Rakuten membership ID or a location displayed on the map in the app as the delivery location, and then selecting the goods they wish to buy through the dedicated smartphone app (available on iOS and Android devices), users can receive their order in as little as 20 minutes, 24 hours a day.
“As long as the location is within the service area, users can have their ordered goods delivered not just to their home or office but to any location where they would like to receive them, such as a store, restaurant or even a park,” Rakuten explained.
Rakubin has established a system whereby delivery vehicles loaded with goods go around the service area and deliver goods to the requested delivery locations when orders are received. Through an original system developed in-house, delivery instructions are automatically issued to the delivery vehicle that is able to carry out the delivery in the shortest time, based on the contents of the order and location information, making it possible to complete deliveries in a very short time.
In the Rakubin app, users can check the estimated time of delivery before placing their order. After the order has been completed, a delivery interval of 15 minutes will be displayed, allowing users to effectively make use of the time before the arrival of the order. The delivery cost for one order is 390 yen (including tax) when users receive the goods beside the delivery vehicle at the specified location, and 770 yen (including tax) when the goods are delivered directly to users by a member of the delivery staff.
In July, a soft launch of the service was carried out in the wards of Shibuya, Setagaya, and Meguro to verify the products and requirements for the service. With the service now available 24 hours a day, the Rakubin service has been fully launched with Minato Ward, which is expected to have a high demand for the service, added to the service area. In light of user demand and other factors, there are plans to further expand the service area and the number of products in the future.
In parallel, the e-retail group has launched ‘Rakuten Delivery Takeout’, a new service which allows customers to pre-order takeout meals and products from its Rakuten Delivery website and pick them up at one of about 600 participating stores across Tokyo. Stores will benefit from extra sales.
Rakuten Delivery is a home delivery website from which customers can, depending on the delivery destination specified, order a wide range of cooked food including pizza, fried chicken, sushi, boxed lunches, curry, hamburgers, Chinese food, Western food, and Japanese food, as well as catering services and alcohol from more than 7,500 participating stores across Japan. The launch of this new service “Rakuten Delivery Takeout” will further enhance customer convenience as it means that, in addition to the website’s current home delivery services, customers will also have the option of instead collecting freshly cooked food themselves from participating stores.
In a third new service, Rakuten has teamed up with convenience store chain Lawson to enable online customers to pick up goods purchased from the Rakuten Ichiba Internet shopping mall at the 11,299 Lawson convenience stores in Japan. The pickup service was launched today (September 1). Lawson has built an open platform that allows other businesses to use its stores as a base for ordering, pickup and delivery.
By presenting the printed ticket, which can be acquired by inputting the inquiry number and authentication number included in the pickup e-mail from Rakuten Ichiba into a Loppi multimedia terminal located in Lawson stores, or the barcode that can be acquired from the pickup e-mail, customers can easily receive their products at the counter in the store.
These latest services follow this spring’s launch of ‘Rakuten Box’, offering deliveries to some 30 parcel lockers in Tokyo operated by Japan Post, and the recent commercial cooperation with leading domestic parcel carrier Yamato, including deliveries to some 20,000 convenience stores that partner with Yamato.
