TOKYO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Yahoo Japan Corp. said on Thursday it plans to acquire online fashion retailer Zozo Inc. with a takeover bid planned to be launched in early October for around 400 billion yen (3.7 billion U.S. dollars).

Yusaku Maezawa, the operator of the Zozotown clothing store, one of Japan's largest e-commerce fashion sites, tweeted his resignation Thursday and according to the company, he will be replaced by Kotaro Sawada.

"I will take a new path, leaving Zozo to a new president," Maezawa's tweet said.

Maezawa, a billionaire entrepreneur, will offload the majority of his roughly 35 percent stake and had said earlier that if selling his equities would aid the online retailer, then he would do so.

Yahoo, for its part, has been looking to deepen its foothold in the e-commerce market here, and better compete against current rivals such as the U.S. Amazon domestic operation and Japan's Rakuten.

Yahoo is looking to Zozo's more than eight million customers a year as a means to achieving this.

The two companies also plan to work together on further ventures connected to online shopping as well as those related to cashless payments.

Maezawa, 43, founded Start Today, which was a forerunner to Zozo, in 1998.

The firm posted a group net profit of 15.99 billion yen (148.22 million U.S. dollars) on sales of 118.4 billion yen (1.09 billion U.S. dollars) in fiscal 2018 that ended in March.