ViSenze & Rakuten to build visual search driven e-commerce

In this new partnership, ViSenze's technology is powering the novel Fashion Finder application on two sites. This allows users to search and buy similar fashion items that they see on the sites, from user-generated photos and from user-uploaded images, which could be taken from fashion websites or e-magazines.

"Rakuten is always on the look-out for like-minded partners and innovative technologies to accelerate our business. We are very excited to embark on this promising partnership with ViSenze, as we truly believe the new retail experience, powered by the Internet, is characterised by discovery! As the first in Taiwan to roll out this feature, we cannot wait to see how our customers in Taiwan will react. Rakuten looks forward to offering this unique feature to our customers in other parts of Asia and beyond," said Mr. Toru Shimada, Senior Executive Officer and CEO of Rakuten Asia.

Mr. Yuichi Ejiri, Executive Officer of Rakuten & CEO of Taiwan Rakuten Ichiba Inc. said, "At Rakuten, shopping is entertainment! We are all about offering personalised, online fashion discovery experiences to our customers so Oshare and the new visual-powered form of e-Commerce with Rakuten Fashion Finder will do just that. With just a click, our shoppers can now search what they want to buy with images instead of words. They can also find out where to buy what their favourite celebrities are wearing or carrying. ViSenze truly makes shopping entertaining!"

ViSenze's intelligent visual search and recognition technology is engineered to help digital businesses in e-commerce, online advertising, affiliate marketing as well as social networks solve real-world challenges in an exploding visual web world. Digital businesses and consumers benefit in a number of ways from ViSenze's technology:

- Similarity Search enables e-commerce companies to let their customers find what they are looking for more efficiently. When online shoppers browse the merchandise, they are subtly recommended visually similar items, based on category, style, colour, pattern – increasing the chances of converting discovery browsing into purchases.

-Intelligent image matching tool allows users to upload photos from websites and e-magazines to find clothing, bags, shoes and accessories similar to those worn by their favourite celebrities, or to upload a picture of their desired fashion item and find the same or similar products.

-Visual-contextual application helps advertising networks and exchanges analyse how online users engage with visual content on the web, in order to render contextual advertisements, or to re-target consumers with an advertisement based on images previously viewed.

- ViSenze's cloud based multi-platform technology enables the above services to be made available to users on-the-go, at anytime and from anywhere, on web, mobile or social networking sites.