Being a Personal Johnnys Shopper
This post is to document the process of getting Johnnys goods to fans unable to get them themselves. Please do not think this is a complaint. It is just fact. The process we (sourangel and I) went through this time may be a little different from other events or things like the Johnnys shop, but in general, hopefully it will help you be a little more informed about why some people charge double the price for goods (which we didn't).
Overly simplified:
-take orders
-buy goods
-buy packaging material
-ship goods
The breakdown:
Taking orders:
Keeping track of everything for everyone and making sure you can get the right amount. Physically easy, but very time-consuming.
Buy goods:
The painful part. Mostly it involves waiting on line for hours upon end in whatever weather conditions the day may bring, and then carrying a ton of stuff all over the place.
In this specific case, the A.B.C-Z & Kis-My-Ft2 First Concert at Yokohama Arena.
Had we been getting goods just for ourselves, we would need to be finished purchasing by 11:50, just before the concert started. However, the amount of goods we needed to get would be impossible to bring into the concert venue with us (over 20 posters alone). This necessitated going back to my apartment first. Luckily I live close enough for this to be feasible. Barely. In order to have time to get to my apartment and back, we would need to leave Yokohama Arena at 10:30 at the absolute latest. This means being done with goods by then. Seeing as they open goods at 9:00am, that means 1.5 hours to get through the line. Meaning we'd need to be within the first few hundred people. At Yokohama, the line usually wraps around the entire Arena by 7:00am. Last time I was around the back (for K8 I showed up at 7:15am), it took me about 4.5 hours to get through the line. So, learning from experience... we took the first train and arrived at the Arena at 5:15am. It was dark. And COLD. VERY COLD. I took a McD run around 7:00 for food and bathroom and the line stretched well out-of-sight around the entire arena, as expected. Luckily they decided to open goods early, at 8:30, since the line was impossibly long by then. Since we were near the beginning, we got through in 45 minutes (had to get back on the interior line due to item restrictions). So in total, we were lucky. Only four hours.
Then we hauled everything back to the station, on the train, took a taxi to my place because the 20-minute walk with all that stuff would be impossible... Dumped everything, ran back to the station... returned to Yokohama Arena at a run... JUST in time. (an extra 2.5 hours, plus travel expenses)
Yay. Concerts were fun, almost all goods obtained.
Let's move on to buying packaging and packing:
We need a way to SEND stuff. Buy boxes, padded envelopes, poster tubes... Since I took care of all the poster shipping, that's about 10 poster tubes to buy and carry just on my own, plus large envelopes, and a bunch of cardboard boxes to be used as stabilizer. HEAVY. AWKWARD. (total time - approx. 2 hours)
Separated orders with nothing large (no posters or shopping bags) from the rest (approx. 30 minutes to sort) and dragged everything to work. Met sourangel after work about halfway between where we live (30 minutes train for each of us, each way, plus travel expenses, approx.), handed over all that for her to deal with, thank goodness.
Back at home: rolled all posters together that needed to be together and put them into their tubes. Added stabilizing cardboard to other goods to minimize risk of damage for those who asked. Put everything into their separate envelopes. (approximately 2 hours)
Filled out mailing labels: UGH. Lots of writing. Another good hour.
Shipping:
Now that everything has been separated out and packed for shipping, I can't carry more than two or three orders at a time. That means multiple trips to the post office. It's about a 12-minute walk, carrying very large, awkward, sometimes heavy objects. At the post office... WAITING. Japan's postal system is not so efficient, sometimes. Yesterday morning's batch of two shipments took me 1.5 hours. This morning's batch was fortunately only about 30 minutes. Tomorrow, when I send out a lot more? I don't even want to think about it.
And then dealing with payment. Painless, but yet again, very time-consuming.
Total amount of time, excluding all of the financial stuff (which took place over the course of about two weeks): 15 hours of my life and counting. And that's just time. My arms are also rather sore and shaky from hauling around heavy packages for two days. Still more to go. And this is excluding all of the mental energy, because how the heck do you calculate that? I spent hours number-crunching stuff.
sourangel went through the same thing. In the end, we each made enough from the commission to almost cover our own goods. But not quite.
So tell me. Do you think it was worth it? I don't think so. We're crazy. Really, really crazy. Having done this, I think anyone who takes these kinds of orders is crazy, too. Seriously. Unless you're charging double the price of goods, it is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WORTH IT.
Will I ever take orders again? Possibly, but if I do, I am charging double value, limiting to large orders (over 5,000yen or something), and NOT accepting poster requests (or other over-sized goods). Also limiting the number of orders accepted so I don't have to deal with item limits.
So there you have one example of what we go through. Obviously for some shows, lines are shorter (YokoAri is notoriously bad), goods are smaller, whatever. The Johnnys shop... okay, having been through that dozens of times just for myself, anyone taking orders for that has to be insane. (If you seriously want the process for the Johnnys shop, I could always write that up, too, so you can get an idea of what those people will go through.)
So for anyone thinking of ordering goods from someone in Japan... don't bitch at them about charging a hell of a lot. If you have friends who love you and are nice enough to just do it for you, that's awesome. And if you find someone crazy (like I was) and doing it for something cheap, lucky you. But if your only option is someone charging 2,000yen for a 500yen uchiwa... well, now you know why they do that.
To other people out there taking orders,
Now I know what you deal with. But even I had NO CLUE until I did it. Most people have no idea what you go through to get things to them. Feel free to link to this post, if you ever need to explain costs. "That's why."
Also, if you have any brilliant suggestions on ways to make any of this process easier, please, please feel free to share them. :)
Overly simplified:
-take orders
-buy goods
-buy packaging material
-ship goods
The breakdown:
Taking orders:
Keeping track of everything for everyone and making sure you can get the right amount. Physically easy, but very time-consuming.
Buy goods:
The painful part. Mostly it involves waiting on line for hours upon end in whatever weather conditions the day may bring, and then carrying a ton of stuff all over the place.
In this specific case, the A.B.C-Z & Kis-My-Ft2 First Concert at Yokohama Arena.
Had we been getting goods just for ourselves, we would need to be finished purchasing by 11:50, just before the concert started. However, the amount of goods we needed to get would be impossible to bring into the concert venue with us (over 20 posters alone). This necessitated going back to my apartment first. Luckily I live close enough for this to be feasible. Barely. In order to have time to get to my apartment and back, we would need to leave Yokohama Arena at 10:30 at the absolute latest. This means being done with goods by then. Seeing as they open goods at 9:00am, that means 1.5 hours to get through the line. Meaning we'd need to be within the first few hundred people. At Yokohama, the line usually wraps around the entire Arena by 7:00am. Last time I was around the back (for K8 I showed up at 7:15am), it took me about 4.5 hours to get through the line. So, learning from experience... we took the first train and arrived at the Arena at 5:15am. It was dark. And COLD. VERY COLD. I took a McD run around 7:00 for food and bathroom and the line stretched well out-of-sight around the entire arena, as expected. Luckily they decided to open goods early, at 8:30, since the line was impossibly long by then. Since we were near the beginning, we got through in 45 minutes (had to get back on the interior line due to item restrictions). So in total, we were lucky. Only four hours.
Then we hauled everything back to the station, on the train, took a taxi to my place because the 20-minute walk with all that stuff would be impossible... Dumped everything, ran back to the station... returned to Yokohama Arena at a run... JUST in time. (an extra 2.5 hours, plus travel expenses)
Yay. Concerts were fun, almost all goods obtained.
Let's move on to buying packaging and packing:
We need a way to SEND stuff. Buy boxes, padded envelopes, poster tubes... Since I took care of all the poster shipping, that's about 10 poster tubes to buy and carry just on my own, plus large envelopes, and a bunch of cardboard boxes to be used as stabilizer. HEAVY. AWKWARD. (total time - approx. 2 hours)
Separated orders with nothing large (no posters or shopping bags) from the rest (approx. 30 minutes to sort) and dragged everything to work. Met sourangel after work about halfway between where we live (30 minutes train for each of us, each way, plus travel expenses, approx.), handed over all that for her to deal with, thank goodness.
Back at home: rolled all posters together that needed to be together and put them into their tubes. Added stabilizing cardboard to other goods to minimize risk of damage for those who asked. Put everything into their separate envelopes. (approximately 2 hours)
Filled out mailing labels: UGH. Lots of writing. Another good hour.
Shipping:
Now that everything has been separated out and packed for shipping, I can't carry more than two or three orders at a time. That means multiple trips to the post office. It's about a 12-minute walk, carrying very large, awkward, sometimes heavy objects. At the post office... WAITING. Japan's postal system is not so efficient, sometimes. Yesterday morning's batch of two shipments took me 1.5 hours. This morning's batch was fortunately only about 30 minutes. Tomorrow, when I send out a lot more? I don't even want to think about it.
And then dealing with payment. Painless, but yet again, very time-consuming.
Total amount of time, excluding all of the financial stuff (which took place over the course of about two weeks): 15 hours of my life and counting. And that's just time. My arms are also rather sore and shaky from hauling around heavy packages for two days. Still more to go. And this is excluding all of the mental energy, because how the heck do you calculate that? I spent hours number-crunching stuff.
sourangel went through the same thing. In the end, we each made enough from the commission to almost cover our own goods. But not quite.
So tell me. Do you think it was worth it? I don't think so. We're crazy. Really, really crazy. Having done this, I think anyone who takes these kinds of orders is crazy, too. Seriously. Unless you're charging double the price of goods, it is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WORTH IT.
Will I ever take orders again? Possibly, but if I do, I am charging double value, limiting to large orders (over 5,000yen or something), and NOT accepting poster requests (or other over-sized goods). Also limiting the number of orders accepted so I don't have to deal with item limits.
So there you have one example of what we go through. Obviously for some shows, lines are shorter (YokoAri is notoriously bad), goods are smaller, whatever. The Johnnys shop... okay, having been through that dozens of times just for myself, anyone taking orders for that has to be insane. (If you seriously want the process for the Johnnys shop, I could always write that up, too, so you can get an idea of what those people will go through.)
So for anyone thinking of ordering goods from someone in Japan... don't bitch at them about charging a hell of a lot. If you have friends who love you and are nice enough to just do it for you, that's awesome. And if you find someone crazy (like I was) and doing it for something cheap, lucky you. But if your only option is someone charging 2,000yen for a 500yen uchiwa... well, now you know why they do that.
To other people out there taking orders,
Now I know what you deal with. But even I had NO CLUE until I did it. Most people have no idea what you go through to get things to them. Feel free to link to this post, if you ever need to explain costs. "That's why."
Also, if you have any brilliant suggestions on ways to make any of this process easier, please, please feel free to share them. :)