I use a lot of Delica beads and I was wondering if I would be better off importing them directly from Japan?
I’m in the bead business and I can tell you that unless your ready to do major importing, non of the Japanese bead manufacturers will deal with you. There are several problems: 1) Your order must be prepaid. If there is a change in the exchange rate in their favor, you have to cough up more cash. 2) There are large minimum order requirements. You can’t order a half a kilo of a particular size/style of a bead. Unless they have changed it, the minimum is several kilos per size/style. 3) Shipping and customs on small orders will eat up any savings you think you’ll have. Larger companies like General Bead bring in huge crates of beads. They have customs brokers on retainer to keep their expenses down for them. 4) There are a lot of additional expenses, including phoning and faxing information back and forth. It also takes a long time to get your goods cleared through customs. I own a bead store and we sell about 150 kilos of Japanese seed beads a year. It’s still not worth it for us to bri
