Insights & Guides
Practical knowledge on Japan market entry — from company setup and visas to trade logistics and branding.
Japan IOR Service Agreement and SLA: What Should Be in Your Importer of Record Contract
A foreign company evaluating Importer of Record (IOR) providers in Japan usually spends most of its diligence effort on price and turnaround time, and very little on the contract itself. That is...
Japan IOR for Health Supplements, Vitamins, and Nutraceuticals: The Food Sanitation Act Layer Foreign Brands Miss
Foreign supplement brands arriving in Japan tend to carry one assumption from their home market: that a "supplement" or "nutraceutical" is a distinct regulatory category with its own approval...
Japan IOR for 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Equipment
Foreign manufacturers of 3D printers and additive manufacturing systems selling into Japan, whether to distributors, research institutions, or manufacturing customers, face the same threshold...
Japan EOR vs Secondment (出向): Which Structure Actually Fits Sending Staff to Japan
Foreign companies planning to place staff in Japan frequently reach for secondment (出向) first, because it is the model most familiar from other markets and from their own group's existing HR...
Importer of Record vs Freight Forwarder vs Customs Broker vs ACP: What Each Role Actually Does in a Japan Import
Foreign companies planning their first shipment into Japan almost always start their research with the same four terms tangled together: Importer of Record, freight forwarder, customs broker, and...
Japan IOR, EOR, and ACP: Frequently Asked Questions (2026)
This post collects the questions foreign companies ask most often when they first encounter IOR, EOR, and ACP as terms describing how to move goods into Japan or hire staff there without a Japan...
What Happens If You Import Into Japan Without an IOR or ACP (2026)
Some foreign companies never make a deliberate decision about how to structure their Japan imports. A freight forwarder offers to "handle everything," a distributor agrees to receive the goods on...
Japan Import Compliance Mistakes That Get Non-Resident Importers Flagged (2026)
Most foreign companies that get flagged by Japan Customs (税関) did not do anything dramatic. They repeated a small procedural inconsistency across several shipments until a pattern formed, and the...
How Long Does It Take to Set Up an IOR in Japan? The Realistic Timeline (2026)
Before a company commits to an Importer of Record (IOR) arrangement in Japan, the question that actually determines whether the deal moves forward is rarely price. It is timing: how long from the...
Japan Importer of Record (IOR) for Foreign Textile Suppliers: Raw Fabric, Yarn, and Industrial Inputs Feeding Japanese Manufacturing
A textile mill shipping raw fabric rolls to a Japanese garment factory, a yarn spinner supplying an industrial thread buyer, or a chemical supplier feeding dye and finishing inputs to a...