4 ms·
"This rebrand is so crazy that I have to assume that somebody inside the company has gone insane." It gets weirder. The CEO of the company (a man I respect al
by arbuge 14y ago
"This rebrand is so crazy that I have to assume that somebody inside the company has gone insane."
It gets weirder. The CEO of the company (a man I respect alot) is Japanese but switched the company's "official language" to English and insisted that all his Japanese employees learn English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7olItNyBfo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7olItNyBfo
Apparently the policy doesn't extend to domain names.
- jacquesm 14y agoI'd say those are both the kind of moves where it is hard to tell up front if they're insane or actually inspired.
- LeonidasXIV 14y agoActually, considering that Rakuten is really trying to expand internationally, it is a really bold move to change the official language to get employees to look a bit over the horizon. Have you ever used the original japanese Rakuten site? It is incredibly awful, just like many other japanese sites, because in Japan the focus is on different things. But if you try to expand with this mentality to the west, you are going to fail and people will laugh at your crappy attempts. So actually, I think this move is incredibly smart.
- rdouble 14y agoWhy is changing the official language to English weird? It's a necessary move if they want to expand internationally. Japanese as an official language makes it impossible to hire almost anyone experienced with large scale e-commerce.
- arbuge 14y agoTo clarify, I didn't think the changing to English was weird - I think that was a smart and bold move. Like I said, I really respect this guy. Was only thinking that changing the domain name to Japanese was weird, especially in view of the aforementioned change to English.