Sorry -- this got REALLY long. Might be a good read though. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I was brainstorming this the other day. I've got absolutely no time at all to do this, so I give anyone permission to steal the idea. The way I see the import game market in the US/UK over the last 3-4 years, goes something like this. I choose 1999 as a start, b/c this is when I got back into games, and sold on Ebay. 1999-2000: Very few sellers from Japan. Profits are very large, and competition is scarce. It's such a shoe-in, retailers from the US will play their "let's see how dumb this guy is" card, asking sellers from Japan to buy for them wholesale. (That's like Tower Records buying wholesale for HMV -- it dont' work). A very small group of people know what Yahoo Japan is, and beg people in Japan to bid for them. Most people don't do it b/c of various reasons. Loss of $$ is one of the more important ones. 2001: Every white person in Japan now supplements their income by selling games on Ebay. Selling prices go WAY down, and finding great deals in Japan is harder. People still beg to bid on Yahoo Japan... some people do, I never did b/c of bad experiences. I bailed out of the business at this stage, btw. 2002: Yamatoku now buys everything off Yahoo Japan, pretty much leaving Japanese collectors out in the cold (and pissing a lot of them off) Also doesn't realize that if you start all your auctions off at $1, you'll make more money. 2003: I don't know the exact timeline, but surrogate bidding companies inside Japan are now gaining fame, and money. Fees are extremely high, but those damn foreigners seem to keep bidding it up! Now REALLY pissing off Japanese fans, b/c their beloved items are bid up (even though they carry the advantage by $10-$30 per item.) 2004: Too early to tell. What I'm thinking of, is since rinkya, hanagoods, etc. have basically taken a pre-emptive against Yamatoku and the other few Yahoo Japan->Ebay sellers, (and in doing so fucked off the entire Yahoo Japan user-base) why not take the next step against them? What's the next step? Getting the sellers to sell (and ship) abroad. Yeah, it's more of a challenge since you have to covince the unwitting Japanese sellers to deal with low-life scum, but think about it? 1: Set up some website that explains your service. Get some Japanese sellers that want to ship abroad, but don't want to hassle w/ the language barrier. You can advertise IN Yahoo Japan for almost nothing. Just start an auction that says "get more bids for your auctions". Start it for 1 yen, and put in the auction description "you don't have to pay", just read the email after winning. You're bound to at least get a few interested. 2: Tell the Japanese sellers that are interested to put something at the bottom of their auction (in English) to contact such-and-such webpage for instructions on international shipping. 3: Serve as a mediator for the two people. Instead of translating a bunch of emails back and forth, just have the JPN user save their details, as well as the user abroad. When the auction is over, just fire off the emails, and charge the abroad user a couple of bucks per transaction. Yeah, there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. I only see two things that might be difficult: -Getting Japanese sellers to get involved. It would take time, but would eventually work I think. If you could start out by getting a few of the big sellers, that would be a good start. -Payment. International Postal Money Order is pretty much the cheapest method. The easiest way is to get the JPN sellers on Paypal, which isn't a good deal for them. There would be extra fees on the JPN side (the exchange rate Paypal gives you is laughable... but I guess that's expected). The only other way is to get the buyers somet type of online bank account in Japan (this is difficult). This is by far the biggest hurdle, but is possible. You could even set up a feedback system and whatnot. What'd ya think? Good idea? Bad idea? If it got off the ground, it could eventually become quite automated, and bring in a little dosh. I'd actually be more into it for helping the underdog, but that's just me. I don't have the time to do it, but thought the idea was worth exploring.
I guarantee the first business that fills this low-overhead/low-price niche will make a mint off sheer volume of orders alone, mine included. I'd love to do this myself but I already do fulltime & freelance work in addition to volunteering. . :smt033 That said, if I can find a reliable Japanese middleman I'd love to get a Sega Mega Adapter.
that timeline is interesting. Because I did now know where Yamatoku gets his games from I have ordered a few times from him too, but also from other bigger eBay Sellers. It would be great if there are more seller on Yahoo Japan who sell international. I always have to check a lot of auctions before i find someone who sends international. But I have not ordered from Yahoo Japan yet, maybe someday
Yamatoku does very little to hide the fact that they buy from Yahoo Japan. Their ID is Yamatoku_Office. There was one other Ebay Power Seller that bought from Yahoo Japan back when I was selling, but that person sells from the states, and doesn't bid much anymore. There are probably a lot of guys that would actually send abroad if you ask them. It's really easy. The only case I can see they wouldn't want to is if they have a Takkyubin pick up the items at their house. I guess the only REAL solution is to have two addresses. One in Japan, one abraod. And say, If you CAN send abroad, please send it to ______. If you do not want to, send it to my JPN address (where you could pay your friend/acquaintance to send it to you). There's no real easy/cheap way to do it yet, unfortunately. I think for it to work for people abroad, there has to be some education of the Japanese people. If it makes you feel anybetter though, most Ebay sellers in NA don't ship out of NA.
That, my friend, is the 100% truth. The way Japan is booming in the west, and all the foreigners living here, I doubt it'll ever change. I think my little plan could help everyone if someone invested the time in it.
I wonder why you didnt make this whole plan worked since years ago ? I bet if you and the mrs could run the show, its quote lucrative those years, this type of business
Back in the day (when I had no knowledge of CGI, or pretty much any development) it was way more lucrative to keep a brick wall between buyers in the West, and sellers in the East. The real money came in buying in bulk, which was Yahoo Japan only. I actually thought of doing the mediator thing long before I had heard of Rinkya or Cellga. I just didn't have the time, nor the tech knowledge to get it automated enough (everything would've been done manually). Now, I could probably make a nice little website that would hold users info, and do a lot of the work by itself. I just don't have the time, and I'll be leaving Japan soon anyway, and not sure for how long. If it's up to the ole ball-and-chain we'll be back in 2 years. It's not up to her though, it's up to the paycheck, ya know.
