First I want to state that I am not taking sides and I want to shed light to the uninformed on how the manufacturing process works in Japan and why ordering wheels from Japan can take a long time 6+ Months...
In Japan, you have several companies like Work, Volk and many others. They Mass produce certain fitments to follow the demand of the marketplace. If you submit a custom offset or custom color or anything outside of their normal run expect long delays... and here is why:
The wheel manufacturers in order to keep costs down run their manufacturing plants to put out a certain offset and size wheel at a time. In other words this month they may only be manufacturing 18 x 9 +45 offsets in models x y and z... this keeps them from having to incur costs from tooling changes or from down time. This same idea applies to colors too... so you may wait 3 months for your wheels to be made in your offset and then have to wait another month or two before they get around to your color... I along with many before you have had to deal with these issues. Again this all depends if you luck out or not when you order. I have seen people order and get their wheels in no time at all... its like russian roulette on time. So say you wheels are made and now painted and ready to go out the door... well there is another delay you see another cost saving technique they use is packing containers full and doing a bulk shipment of containers so you may wait a couple of days or weeks for that to go through and the ship get released to open waters. Once in the US the wheels have to go through customs by container and ship. If their is no problems with the ship and its containers your stuff may get released for pickup or shipment. If their is a problem with the ship or some of the contents on said ship expect for another delay. But dont let all of this scare you...
Typically I have found that a set of wheels pre made from Japan take about 3-5 months and anything custom usually take 6-12 months. I have ordered wheels from japan for alot of my vehicles. Average time for my wheels from order to delivery 7-8 months... I see alot of guys on here who want their wheels ASAP and granted I wanted mine that way too. So the best advice when ordering wheels from japan is to expect a 7-8 month turnaround on your purchase...
A side note: since Fukashima and the earthquakes(Over 700 since march)/tsunami I would expect longer delays for wheels from Japan!!! Also, Rick is taking a lot of this in house on the manufacturing side to counter a lot of the issues he has had with the whole japan mess. This explains why he is moving into a larger facility and why it is hard to sometimes get a hold of him. no excuses here just a little insight on what some may not know is going on behind the scenes. If you have questions on anything I have posted feel free to ask or PM me.
Mike
