Gone are the days where it’s dead difficult to source JDM parts directly from Japan.
Unlike, five to ten years ago, Japan has been slowly but surely opening up their market to the oversea market. This is caused by decades of economical stagnation, unfamiliarity with oversea market and lack of English-speaking staffs. Lately, more and more startup are springing up within Japan that target oversea customer specifically.
Even so, not many has pass the incubator stage as they have to face with a problem they are very unfamiliar with – transaction fraud.
This has caused many big companies to outright shun away from selling their products overseas. If you have been to Japan before and has tried to shop online, you will notice a lot of online store actually do not accept credit card issued outside Japan.
The reason, is simple, they were simple too many frauds from foreigners. How does these fraudsters do their dirty works? They usually place orders using a stolen credit card and when the true owner of the credit card noticed the unauthorized charges, they will inform the bank and bank will issue a charge back to the merchant.
When this happen, the items usually has been delivered and the merchant has lost both their stock and money. Due to this reason, Japanese rarely want to do any business oversea as online fraud is very low in Japan. This especially is true when it comes to far more expensive products like JDM wheels that can cost up to hundreds or thousands per wheel.
Alright, enough with the chattering, here are some place which you guys can get JDM easily via online
1. Ebay
Yes, the good old ebay. To find sellers from Japan, simply FILTER the seller location to “Asia” & add “Japan” behind your search keyword.
although this method is not perfect, but it does help you filter most of the unwanted results. JDM parts sold in ebay are usually sold by non-Japanese living in Japan.
Pro:
- Japanese parts seller on ebays are usually sold by Expats or someone who can speaks English
Cons:
- Is really hard to filter out items that are specifically for your car on eBay since eBay is not an E-Commerce website for Auto parts
- There is a very limited selection of JDM parts
2. Yahoo Auction Japan
I very sure that you guys are very familiar with Yahoo Auction as well. This has been the source of many JDM enthusiastic for years. But little that you know, most of the sellers here in Yahoo Auctions actually bought their items from UP Garage / Croooober and resell them here.
Pro:
- Lots of selections
Cons:
- It’s all in Japanese & communication with sellers are difficult
- Most sellers do not ship outside Japan – You will need a find a 3rd party logistics to help you ship the item out of Japan
- Lots of items are actually bought from UP Garage / Croooober & resold here
3. Croooober
Croooober is the largest used auto part marketplace from Japan that ship worldwide. Started back in 2014, they are the used auto parts behemoth that most car customization enthusiasts will definitely heard of in Japan.
They currently have more than 200 used auto parts retailers selling onboard, mainly the infamous UP Garage (the largest in Japan). So shopping at their website literally save you searching from store to store to look for the parts you are looking for.
Pros:
- They delivery worldwide
- Their site is built specifically for automotive, thus you can search the parts you are looking for easily
- They have English-speaking staffs
- HUGE inventories, with more than 200,000 to 300,000 parts available at all time
- Japanese literally purchase from their site and resell it on Yahoo Auction and at other platforms, such as Ebay
Cons:
- Their search engine might be a bit difficult to use if you not familiar with it
- Their site navigation is a bit horrible and the design seems out-of-date
Have you used Croooober before?
Do let me know what do you think of the site!
