NTT DoCoMo is stepping up efforts to expand into the e-commerce sector with plans to acquire local fashion goods shopping website MagaSeek.
The Japanese mobile giant announced on Wednesday that it will make a public tender offer to buy all shares of MagaSeek, with approval from its parent company Itochu.
In a friendly takeover, DoCoMo is seeking to acquire a minimum of approximately 41.67% of MagaSeek’s total shares. The sale will not go through unless DoCoMo can procure the minimum. Itochu has agreed to tender 8,342 shares, or 39.37%, and will continue to hold a 25% stake.
The tender, which offers 135,000 yen ($1481) per share, will last from January 31 to March 14.
Once the tender offer has completed, MagaSeek will become a consolidated subsidiary of DoCoMo, which aims to use the store as a way of expanding its dshopping (via its dmarket online store) mobile service.
The operator said it plans to launch a fashion goods store on the dshopping leveraging portal leveraging its large user base, Itochu’s leadership in textile goods and MagaSeeek’s strong merchandising and logistic capabilities.
“DoCoMo expects to build business synergies in customer satisfaction and shopping convenience by linking MagaSeek’s services with DoCoMo’s 60 million customers, cloud services and business expertise,” the operator said.
DoCoMo last year acquired a controlling stake in Radishbo-ya, a home-delivery service for organic vegetables and preservative-free foods, as part of its strategy to diversifying business into eight new fields including e-commerce for new revenue streams.
At present, dmarket sells 100,000 different food items. By 2015, DoCoMo aims for e-commerce to contribute 7% of its revenues.
MagaSeek was found in 2003. The company posted a profit of 138 million yen ($1.5 million) and 9,698 million yen worth of sales for the financial year ended March 2012.