Groupon Japan

» see groupon.jp as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

The daily deal email was one of the few internet formats that landed everywhere at once. Around 2010 and 2011 it reached turkey the same way it reached everywhere else, a mail every morning offering half price on something you had not thought about until that second, and i never bought from one. The category burned out fast in most countries. Japan is where it burned out loudest.

Qpod was set up in tokyo on 4 june 2010, a local copy of a model that was two years old in chicago and already being cloned in every market with a credit card system. Groupon bought it on 18 august 2010 for roughly ten million dollars and renamed the company Groupon Japan on 1 october. By 27 october cumulative coupon sales had passed one billion yen, which gives you the temperature of the thing.

The mechanics were the same everywhere. A restaurant or a spa agreed to a discount deep enough to hurt and Groupon took a cut of what was left. The merchant was supposed to earn it back on customers who came a second time at full price. Enough of them never came again that the model had a shelf life built into it from the start.

~ the case file ~

~ the climb ~

Japan took to it faster than almost anywhere. Monthly sales were running at something like 480 million yen by march 2011, and the clone field filled with competitors backed by companies far larger than Groupon. It looked for a moment like the deal site would become a permanent layer of japanese retail rather than a phase.

What actually happened is that the merchants worked out the arithmetic. A discount that deep only pays if the customer returns at full price, and a customer trained by a deal site is a customer waiting for the next deal.

~ the osechi ~

In december 2010 Groupon Japan sold osechi, the lacquered boxes of new year food that a japanese household eats on the first days of january, at what was advertised as half price. The supplier was a caterer called Gaishoku Bunka Kenkyujo. On new year's day the boxes arrived late where they arrived at all, and buyers opened them to find portions that bore no relation to the advertising photograph, with some of the food already spoiled.

The pictures went up immediately and the phrase sukasuka osechi, the sparse osechi, entered the language. Groupon apologized on 5 january 2011 and refunded the full 10,500 yen to every buyer with another 5,000 yen of goods on top. It is the single thing most japanese people still associate with the brand, fifteen years later, and it arrived in the company's fourth month of operating under its own name.

~ the day it died ~

Groupon spent the back half of the decade leaving countries. On 28 september 2020 it announced its exit from japan and stopped issuing coupons the same day, giving no public reason beyond the global business being what it was. Coupons already bought stayed valid in stores until 27 december 2020, and anything unused after that was refunded through whatever card had paid for it, which is a tidier ending than most shutdowns manage.

The corporate paperwork took another year. Shareholders resolved to dissolve the company on 15 june 2021 and the legal entity was closed on 14 december 2021. Ten years after buying its way into the market for ten million dollars, Groupon left it with a phrase about empty food boxes as the main thing it had contributed to the language.

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