Aliso Viejo-based online retailer Buy.com Inc. is being acquired for $250 million by Japan’s Rakuten Inc.
The move is part of a global expansion by Rakuten, Japan’s largest Internet company. Rakuten runs an online mall plus auction, bookstore, Internet search, travel and stock trading sites.
Rakuten has yearly sales of about $3.2 billion.
Buy.com sells electronics, DVDs, CDs and some 60 million other products. About 35,000 merchants also use the site to sell their products.
The company has yearly sales of about $500 million.
The deal marks the second time Buy.com has been acquired all or in part by a Japanese company. In 1999, a group led by Softbank Corp. paid $165 million for a stake in Buy.com.
Buy.com went public in 2000 and went private again in 2001.
The company looked to go public again in 2005 but never did.
Orange County native Scott Blum started the company in 1997 with a plan to sell products at a loss and offset that with online advertising revenue.
Blum left the company in 2006.
In 2007, Buy.com sold a 9% stake to New York-based private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group LLC.
Buy.com’s current management is expected to stay in place with the acquisition by Rakuten.
