Korean luxury resale platform Kream announced it has acquired Japan’s Soda, owner of limited-edition goods trading platform Snkrdunk, in a bid to become the leading customer-to-customer (C2C) and fashion e-commerce destination in Asia Pacific.
The integration of the two companies will provide an expanded product and channel offering to both consumers and fashion brands, not only in Korea and Japan, the two largest Asian markets for limited-edition goods, but also to other countries such as the US, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, where Kream and Soda have respective operations.
As part of the takeover, Soda CEO and Founder, Yuta Uchiyama, will be joining Kream as a board member, as well as chief officer for the combined operations’ global expansion, while current Soda management will continue to run the Japanese firm’s operations.
The takeover is set to be completed in the first half of 2024, and an IPO is also being considered for Soda in the local Japanese market in the near future, according to a press release.
Soda launched Snkrdunk in 2018, which is today Japan’s largest buy-and-sell platform for authentic sneakers and apparel. The Tokyo-based company acquired its rival Monokabu in 2021 after raising USD 56.4M from SoftBank Ventures Asia.
