Originally Posted by Ben

ok, now for an offical breakdown of how it works.

Much to our financial loss, we ship containers every two weeks from Tokyo to Long Beach (I dare all of you to find anyone in this industry who ships faster). We ship every two weeks not because it's cost effective, but because it's been my goal for the past 3 years to quicken our shipments until we're the fastest importer in the industry. I hate waiting and obviously everyone else does as well.

So I'll present the short answer and the long answer.

Short answer:
4-6 weeks if the part is in stock in Japan when we order it (very unlikely since most Japanese companies build parts to order)
Then add weeks onto that # as the build time varies in Japan. Most companies will take 3-5 weeks on average to fulfill an order.
So we generally quote our customers 8-14 weeks. That assumes a supplier production and fulfillment time of roughly 3-5 weeks (pretty average) and also pads the dates by another couple of weeks.

We're always trying to under promise and over deliver. If I expect your part to arrive in two months, I'll tell you 2.5-3. Aside from me wanting to always beat our customer's expectations, I must also account for the unknown (production delays, customs delays, etc)

So here is a more detailed breakdown of how it all works:

1. 2-7 days: order is processed, contact is made in Japan, payment is processed with supplier in Japan
2. x amount of time for production
3. 2-7 days: delivery of parts from the supplier to our Japanese warehouse (Tokyo)
4. 1-14 days: waiting to load onto a container
5. 1 week: container is moved to port and placed on boat
6. 2 weeks: boat goes to Long Beach
6. 3-xxx days: customs clearance in Long Beach, in bad scenarios this can take up to 3 weeks of the container sitting in customs
7. 1 day: Delivery to Bulletproof's warehouse
8. 1-2 days: Bulletproof takes inventory of container, inspects for damage
9. 1-5 days: Bulletproof repackages and reinforces all boxes for abusive US freight handlers and ships individual orders out
10. 1-7 days: Domestic freight to our customers...arrives at customer's door.

Originally Posted by RIDGERCR,Jun 19 2009, 08:41 PM

Very well put.

I'd support you guys any day of the week and personally and proudly display your website on my liscense plate frame I was given from an order placed some time back.

Keep the awesome and most professional business of providing Japan's premiere aftermarket parts rolling!

-Jeremy