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INTEREST: Art Shops to Stop Carrying Manga Artist-Favored Ink

What alternatives are there? This Ink really suits the Shojo style.

Hello!

Doctor here. A lot of good questions and guesses as to what's happening!

I want to clear a few things up:
1) Dr. Ph. Martin’s brand products are not being discontinued.
2) We are not abandoning the Japanese market.
3) The main importer in Japan, Bonny ColArt, decided to stop carrying the product with very little notice. We are working (scrambling, if I'm being honest) on a plan to service the Japanese market as quickly and efficiently as possible.

There were many factors at play here and I just want to set the record straight.

Our products are 100% made in the US. Always have been, and (hopefully) always will be. All our products are small batch, made by hand, 1-6 gallons at a time. In 2018 we moved our main production facility to California and have taken several steps to increase the quality of the product.

Our cost have actually increased over the years many times and we have chosen not to update the costs (or to pass through very small increases) for our international customers. In most cases the cost of our increases (which only happened a few times over the last 10 years) were less than inflation. As a result we were selling at prices that were over a decade old, inflation adjusted, not even taking into account the increased cost of materials, transportation, etc.. We do import some raw materials from other countries (glass, plastic, etc.). The tariffs do affect us, but not critically. We are absorbing those costs for now.

There was another problem with our current relationship: We have introduced many new products over the years, but our primary partner was unwilling to carry them. It is hard for us to really function in a market when we can't play with a full deck of cards.

Sometimes these things happen. We had a good relationship with Bonny ColArt for many years. We’d be happy to explore that again if it makes sense.

But this is all in the past. I want to tell you about what we are doing for the future.

Here is what we are doing today:
1) We are doubling down our efforts on the Japanese market, effective immediately.
2) We will service the Amazon pipeline directly. I understand that Amazon.co.jp is not as big in Japan as it is in the United States, but we can service this channel immediately with all products in our catalog at a very competitive price. We will be shipping out new stock for all 260 primary SKUs that we sell this week. We will double the inventory for products we know are popular in Japan, like sets of Dr. Ph. Martin’s Radiant Concentrated Watercolors.
3) We have made it easier to order direct from us at https://www.docmartins.com. You can purchase in your local currency and we offer new shipping options that should help with cost. Our shipping is delivery duty paid, so there will be no additional customs fees when you purchase direct from us. If your order is over 16000 yen shipping is FREE and INCLUDES customs and duties. We know that’s a very high barrier. We’re working on it.
4) We are working on creating new relationships with retailers in Japan. Some customers have recommended Sekaido. We reached out to them last week and we are hoping to hear back shortly. If you have ANY other recommendations please let me know in the thread below.

We also have some long-term projects for Japan that we hope to complete in the next year.
1) A fully localized version of our website in the Japanese language with direct fulfillment of inventory already in Japan.
2) Lower prices for our color sets. Lower cost shipping options for items shipped from our production facility in California.
3) Working more directly with artists in Japan through a new partner program.
4) Localization of our product themselves. Most of our products currently have English only labels.

I’m very sorry for the disruption that this caused Japanese customers. Your support means a lot to us and I will personally do my best to correct this.

If you have any questions, comments, or ideas you can email me directly: [email protected]. Any ideas you might have for new retailers our products you'd like to make sure are available, please let me know.


—
Aaron

The article should probably be updated with this response, or perhaps one that reaches the Japanese mangaka community would be worth putting out.