By introducing Matching Engine, Mercari Shops was able to build the production vector search service within a couple of months. As of one month after launching the service, they haven’t seen any incidents. From development to production, only a single ML engineer implements and operates the whole service. An important enabler for this is fixed pricing, unlike online auction platforms such as eBay and Yahoo! In fact, the goods posted online often sell very quickly because buyers receive immediate push notifications for products that may be of interest based on their previous search results.
https://updatedideas.com/is-mercari-legit-a-honest-review/ is a Japan-based electronic commerce and Internet company that offers various services, including online shopping and video on demand. DMM’s e-commerce division focuses on digital items such as ebooks, online games, education services, and video on demand, as well as traditional DVD releases, mail orders, and online renting. Silicon Valley is a region in the southern San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, referring to the Santa Clara Valley, which serves as the global center for high technology, venture capital, innovation, and social media.
With the successful introduction, Mercari Shops is now working on adding more functionalities and extending the service to future shop projects. For example, Matching Engine has a filter vector match function that applies simple filters to the search results. With this function, they may only show “on-sale” items, or exclude items from specific shops. Also, Matching Engine will support a streaming index update soon that would allow the users to find items as soon as they are added by the sellers. Vertex AI Feature Store looks attractive too as a replacement for the Cloud Bigtable as the repository of feature vectors with its additional functionality including feature monitoring for better observability of the service quality.
Was the effort easier, since Japan is known to have a strong culture of trust, or harder since the population may not be accustomed to providing such feedback? I also wonder why no other international e-commerce company entered/found success in Japan. Is there something about Mercari originating in Japan that makes it more accessible to consumers and more easily regulated by the government (or allowed for easier partnerships? My intuition is yes.)? Auction have been incumbents, it makes me think that YES international companies could have made it work BUT that they severely underestimated the political, cultural, and technical differences that would have been necessary to understand first.
It was founded in 2013 and was one of Japan’s first unicorns, raising $1.2B during its IPO in June 2018. In a country that it still dominated by large, traditional Japanese companies, Mercari is considered a trailblazer in the tech industry and among Japanese entrepreneurs at large. Qoo10, formerly GMarket, is a Singaporean e-commerce platform servicing the Southeast Asian region through localized online marketplaces in various countries, including Japan. The platform, operated by a joint venture with eBay, offers a massive collection of products in categories including mobile, sports, fashion, home living, books, and e-tickets. “Being one of the largest e-commerce players in Japan, our focus is to create value in a global marketplace where anyone can buy & sell, and on maintaining consistent customer satisfaction by employing suitable tech solutions. Over the next few years, we plan to increase our headcount to support Mercari’s international endeavors and will look to recruit talent mainly from Bengaluru,” says Wakasa.
But the reason why Japanese people rapidly accepted the usage of Mercari was some of its unique features that increased the convenience of the customers. Back in February 2013 when Yamada founded Mercari, its original name was Kouzoh, Inc. After a few months, the mobile app of the company for both Android and iOS devices were launched. It was shocking to witness that more than a million people signed up for this online shopping platform within a year. Mercari’s main product is the Mercari marketplace app, which allows users to buy and sell items quickly from their smartphones.
Mercari, which also has offices in the U.S and the U.K., has seen U.S. downloads jump to 20 million, doubling since March. The start-up says it is focusing on the No. 1 economy, where it has been charging 10 percent commissions on sold items since Oct. 19. A Mercari spokesperson said its U.S. earnings have risen sixfold since 2015, though it declined to be more specific. Items available on Wowma include cosmetics, home equipment, decorations, clothing, electronics, restaurant bookings, and personal care services.
Mercari was founded on Feb 1, 2013, by Shintaro Yamada & is based in Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The company currently operates in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Mercari is a community-powered shopping app from Japan allowing anyone to buy and sell anything from anywhere. Following its success in Japan, Mercari expanded its operations to the United States in 2014 and the United Kingdom in 2016.