J-list
 

how much is shipping on items on J-list?and how much for multiple items?

You are joking, right?

J-List -- You've got a friend in Japan!

Rediculously expensive for what you're buying, generally. And the mark-up on items is insane as well.

He fills a market for people that want stuff from Japan, but don't know anyone who lives there. Smart businessman.

Oh, I definitely understand his business practices (it's what I'm in school for after all lol), and from a purely business standpoint he's extremely smart for capitalizing on a relatively untapped market due to it's exclusivity. I was just commenting on the moral aspect of selling things I can find at the 100 yen store for four times the price. I understand he has to make money somewhere, but come on now...

When I see something like this it actually always reminds me of this story of when I was back in high school. One of the jobs then was working for a video game store. One of the things my manager always reinforced was the ethics in business more so than the moving of products. Because we were selling such expensive hardware, my manager always impressed upon us to do the right thing and not try and sell something like 4 controllers to a grandmother who is trying to buy her only grandchild a console for the holidays or whatever, because it's totally unnecessary.

I know that's sort of a different scenario, but having proper business ethics is still really important. According to this site it's gonna cost me $13.50 if I really want to send a small bag of Kit Kats back home to my family LOL.

An item is worth the value someone is willing to pay for it. A 100 yen box of Pocky is worth 4 dollars to a kid in Kansas. Do you want to make a 300% profit, or do you want to allow someone else to make it?

There is nothing immoral about selling something for a profit as long as the purchaser knows what they are buying. The immorality is when you deceive the buyer.

No one is forcing you to buy Japanese Kit-Kats, but if you are the person that wants to buy them, then $13.50 is not a bad price.

I know what you're saying, but I feel that the deception in this scenario lies within the actual value of the product, not the point at which someone will pay for it. The people pay for it because they don't have a choice if they really want the product. You can argue that there's a certain point that the value of the product will decrease when someone is not willing to pay for it, but I tend to feel this is inflated because JList has a pretty strong monopolization of the JP import goodies market, so people's limits on what value they'll place on the bag of Kit Kats will be higher.

Whereas an example I have is of those green and yellow JDM signs beginning drivers put on cars. It's kind of a trend for import car enthusiasts to put them on their cars back in the states. I personally bought one for my car and paid something like 9 dollars for it. Of course I wanted the product, but I didn't have any kind of source to find the real value of it either. So I took it at face value and bought it, because I didn't know the true value and couldn't look into it. Low and behold there's a stack of them at my local 100 yen shop.

Knowing what I know now I would never pay that much for such a thing again, but it's value was worth more to me then because I didn't know what it was really worth.

An item is worth as much as the person paying for it decides it is worth.

For Japanese items being sold out of Japan - there is a "collectible" value that is set by the buyer. This is over the regular market value. The same kind of value comes into play inside Japan for imported items. It is really the rarity you are paying for.

You say you bought a decal for $9 - but can find them in Japan at the 100yen shop. In Japan. You were not in Japan when you bought it, so did not have the option of heading over to the 100 yen shop and picking one up. You paid for the convenience, and the value you assigned to the item. You were not ripped off.

The same kind of thing comes into play with any collectible item. This is why certain items eventually hit amazing prices at auction - there is more value to the buyer than the actual production cost or value of materials.

I personally get a kick out of just looking at the prices on J-list because of the silly things that are so incredibly expensive. I don`t think they list it any more, but a couple years back they had a 10,000 Nitori futon set for sale at something like $800. Cheapy kotatsu for $1000 and up.

I would never pay that kind of price for these things, even if I lived in the middle of nowhere in the US. And no one is going to force me to. But there are apparently people out there who will, and who value the items enough to pay that amount.

I don`t think it is even misleading. In many cases it WOULD cost more to simply buy the things in Japan and send them to the US - and that is for me living here. Imagine the price difference for someone living in the US who wants a bag of Kit-Kats. J-List is cheap if you realize that for them to get the low low Japan price they`d need to fly here.

I love that site :D