Rakuten France feed for Shopify

Rakuten France's import model differs from the Mirakl marketplaces on purpose: there is one “Import du stock”, and every row is an advert that carries the offer (reference, EAN, price, quantity, condition, comment) and, when the EAN is unknown to Rakuten, the product content needed to create the sheet. No products file to split off, no offers companion.

The rule that should shape your first run: submitted content cannot be updated by re-import. Corrections go through Rakuten customer service and deleting content is impossible; to remove an offer, you set its stock to zero. Proof the title, description and brand columns before the first live run (the File Validator is the mandatory pre-flight for a first integration), and keep sold-out variants in the feed at quantity 0.

Rakuten matches offers to its catalogue by EAN: the 13-digit code (12-digit EANs are converted; books carry their ISBN). The exceptions are the private categories (clothing, shoes, furniture, decoration, jewellery), where the référence privée, your hidden reference, is the matching key instead. Keep that reference stable across runs: the template maps the variant SKU and falls back to the variant id.

The category alias is more than a classification: it is required to create a product sheet at all, and it decides which content attributes are mandatory in that category. The only one Rakuten marks required across the board is the image: 1,000×1,000 px, up to 10 MB, white or transparent background, JPG or PNG. Brands are validated against Rakuten's own brand list (an unlisted brand must be created on request first), and variations exist only in whitelisted categories; elsewhere Rakuten's team sets them up.

Onboarding is a self-serve form followed by a call from an ecommerce consultant. The commercials: no setup fee, a monthly plan at 39, 199 or 499 € excl. VAT, and a commission by category (12–21 % on the Classic plan, 6–16 % on Absolute). Payouts land twice a week, on Monday and Thursday.

Two costs live outside the feed. Shipping is configured in the account's grid (leader and follower amounts per zone and mode) and never travels in the file; until you configure it, Rakuten charges 25 % of the order value by default, so set the grid before you sell. Promotions are the second: they need a campaign created in the back-end first, and only then do the prix_promo and prix_de_référence columns mean anything, with a minimum of 0.90 €.

Same group, different product. Rakuten Advertising is the global affiliate network (ex-LinkShare) with its own tab-separated feed; this page and template are the Rakuten France marketplace at fr.shopping.rakuten.com. If you came here for affiliate links, you want the other Rakuten card.

Transport is documented first-hand: Rakuten's own FAQ calls the feed-URL integration “the fastest of the various product import methods” and points you to the File Validator's “Test a feed” section before you proceed. The column set behind this template is transcribed from integrator documentation rather than the account's downloadable “fichier modèle”. That file and the File Validator are the authority, so reconcile the headers on the first import. On cadence: product data updates typically take around 24 hours on Rakuten's side.