Shopping app Mercari becomes first Japanese unicorn (AMZN, EBAY)

Reuters/ Mike Blake

The BI Intelligence Content Marketing Team covers news & research we think you would find valuable.

The first unicorn has appeared in Japan.

Peer-to-peer marketplace app Mercari has become the first pre-IPO startup unicorn after its valuation surpassed $1 billion following its latest round of funding, TechCrunch reports. The company raised $75 million in its first Series D and brought its total funding up to $111 million.

The app debuted in Japan in July 2013 and in the U.S. on September 12, 2014. Mercari claims its app has been downloaded 32 million times, including 7 million U.S. downloads, and that its current gross merchandise value exceeds $88 million per month.

Mercari chief financial officer Kei Nagasawa said the latest round of funding would go towards expansion in Japan, the U.S., and Europe. The company is also open to merger and acquisition possibilities.

The company has to compete in the U.S. with a host of e-commerce powerhouses, such as Amazon and eBay. Mercari focuses on mobile e-commerce, but even in that space it faces challengers such as Wish, Jet, and Poshmark.

But the company has refined its ability to stand apart from the competition in Japan, where it has competed with Yahoo Japan's Yahoo Auctions, which also offers peer-to-peer transactions.

Mercari's success is due at least in part to the changing ways in which consumers are buying their goods. More customers are moving toward these so-called "flea market" apps to buy goods directly from other consumers rather than from a corporation.

The rise of online and mobile shopping has given consumers more choice, flexibility, and often better service, and retailers are shifting their strategies to keep up.

Cooper Smith, senior research analyst at BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on new e-commerce strategies that looks at some of the top trends affecting retailers at each stage of the purchase funnel and how they're responding to those shifts.

Reuters/ Mike Blake

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Within digital, consumers are spreading out their retail purchasing across channels, forcing retailers to spread out their online marketing budgets. Paid search, affiliate marketing, and email all increased their share of e-commerce referrals last year, according to Custora.
• Paid search especially stood out as a major source of spending by retailers. Search ad spending grew 18% YoY in Q4 2015, according to IgnitionOne.
• Mobile continues to drive the most sales growth for retailers, but sales still aren't keeping up with retail traffic. IBM found that smartphone traffic beat both tablet and desktop, making up 53% of all online traffic. But mobile still only accounted for 29% of all online sales.
• Retailers only have themselves to blame for underperformance on mobile, as many still aren't using best practices for mobile websites and apps. Only 60% of the top 100 global retailers currently have a dedicated mobile website, according to The Search Agency.
• The increase in online shopping has put stress on the shipping and logistics industry. The number of UPS ground packages delivered on time during the holidays fell from 97% in 2014 to 91% in 2015, according to ShipMatrix.
• Retailers are beginning to explore alternative shipping options. Earlier this year Gilt Groupe switched its primary ground shipper from UPS to Newgistics.
• Retailers that can't afford to invest in alternative shipping options are offering consumers more fulfillment options using what many of them do have — brick-and-mortar stores. Buying online and picking up in-store, also called click and collect, made up about 30% of e-commerce sales at Sam's Club in 2015.

In full, the report:

• Looks at how retailers are shifting their ad spending and marketing efforts to keep up with online retail behavior
• Identifies which channels are top performers for referral traffic and new opportunities for reaching consumers
• Analyzes how retailers are responding to the rise of mobile purchasing and where they're falling short
• Examines the evolving delivery landscape and the aggressive moves retailers are making to become their own shipping carriers

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of new e-commerce strategies.