History

Takenaga was a university student. One day, he visited a second-hand PC store to sell his old laptop to save money for the bar examination.

The shop offered him to pay 40,000 yen.
He was not satisfied with the price and tried online auction, which just started to bloom.

As a result, he was able to sell it at 150,000 yen.
The price increased nearly fourfold. Besides, the buyer was delighted. Since then, he was fascinated by the auction business and started to sell items procured at flea markets and overseas at auction.

Takenaga rolled out the auction business as an independent business proprietor. It came to generate hundreds of millions of yen in annual sales.

His business was incorporated after scaling up.
The established company was named Defactostandard, Ltd. The new company set up “Brandear,” a service purchasing used luxury goods from individual users.

Defactostandard, Ltd. expanded the business by procuring merchandise from flea markets, providers, and overseas to resell. It also started purchasing high-end items from individuals.

The company frequently used an auction price search site “(Provisional) Auction Statistics Page” to check the market price before buying items.

Takenaga had an opportunity to meet its administrator.

After a series of negotiations, the webmaster agreed to hand over the website to him.

That is the very origin of our aucfan.com site.


Later, Defactostandard, Ltd. spun off its media division, the website’s management body, as Aucfan Co., Ltd.

Aucfan successfully developed media business by integrating the privately-owned search site into the corporate media of aucfan.com, adding more services for members, and creating pay content. In 2013, Aucfan went public on the TSE Mothers.

Many of the aucfan.com users were business owners who procured and sold merchandise like our founder Takenaga.

We received many requests from customers to support procurement and sales in addition to the existing price information service.

We considered acquiring businesses to accelerate development while making new content to support procurement and sales to respond to those requests.

In 2015, we acquired two businesses to enhance marketplace business: “NETSEA,” the largest online B2B wholesale mall formerly managed by DeNA, and “ReValue,” a service to liquidate slow-moving inventory.

“TATEMPO GUIDE,” a centralized system to operate and manage online shops, was also added to our solution business in the same year.

In April 2022, OSR Net Co., Ltd., an operator of offline exhibition-based business matching events in Osaka, joined the Group. This enabled us to establish a framework to support BtoB transactions through both online and offline channels.

In addition, with a view toward expanding into overseas wholesale markets, we established Aucfan (Hainan) Network Technology Co., Ltd. in Hainan, China, in June 2022.
Furthermore, in August 2023, we entered into a strategic partnership with Zhejiang China Commodities City Group, the operator of one of the world’s largest wholesale markets.

Through these initiatives, we have been advancing market development and building cross-border networks in both Japan-to-China and China-to-Japan distribution.

Through our global expansion, we have steadily built our sourcing network and distribution infrastructure.
Amid these efforts, we have advanced initiatives to plan, develop, and sell our own brands in the China-to-Japan supply chain, accumulating sales track records across both BtoB and BtoC channels.

Based on these achievements, we transitioned into a new business phase in 2025, centered on “D2X Commerce”.

Under our proprietary brands, AP LAB and KACHIKA, we leverage manufacturing bases in China to develop and produce products in-house. In addition to domestic retail sales in Japan, we have also expanded into wholesale distribution for corporate clients.

In the live commerce domain, we quickly captured the emergence of TikTok Shop in Japan and launched a model in which we directly source and sell products ourselves.

Through these initiatives, we are establishing a “D2X (Direct to X)” model that enables us to deliver products directly to both BtoB and BtoC customers.

Leveraging the data foundation, distribution infrastructure, and global network we have built to date, the Aucfan Group is entering a new phase of growth driven by D2X Commerce.