Buy.com, the 15-year-old e-commerce site, has plugged in Hotwire to guide PR as the web property owned by Japan-based Internet giant Rakuten seeks to transition to a “destination shopping experience.”
GolinHarris handled the account since 2008.
Buy.com, which marked its 15th anniversary on June 6, in January brought in a new chief marketing officer, Bernard Luthi, a veteran of online shopping properties Newegg and PC Mall.
“We’re looking forward to really taking the awareness of our brand to the next level and feel that the agency will deliver that for us,” Luthi said of hiring Hotwire.
The firm will support Buy.com’s “reinvention strategy” as it works to “humanize” e-commerce. CEO Neel Grover said in a statement that the company is “concentrating on reinventing the business to deliver a new era of online shopping, one that brings the benefits associated with traditional brick and mortar shopping, online.”
Rakuten owns web retailer and services companies in Japan, France and the U.K and spent $250M in 2010 to acquire Buy.com, which started out as an online electronics retailer but has expanded its scope.
London-based Hotwire, founded in 2000, opened U.S. outposts in New York and San Francisco in November.
Rakuten last month led a $100M investment round in Pinterest.