Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten has dipped its toe into the offline world by opening up its first café in Tokyo, Japan.
The 85 seat café will allow people to use Rakuten‘s online services such as marketplace Ichiba, as well as Kobo ebooks and free Wi-Fi.
Rakuten said it hopes to create a venue that will introduce new audiences to its services and to offer an additional marketing channel for Ichiba merchants.
Waterstones launched a tie-up with Amazon to stock ebooks and launched in-store cafes two years ago. According to Ofcom, Kindle dominates the UK e-bookmarket with 79 per cent using Kindle to download, access or sharing e-books. Kobo (WH Smith) was used by 5 per cent and Waterstones was used by 3 per cent.
Consumption of coffee in Japan has soared over the last 40 years and the average consumer now drinks around 10 cups of coffee a week.
