Short version: US shops that buy wholesale from Japan keep coming back for ceramic tableware, stationery and paper goods, and wooden household items. Most boxes go by express courier. When a box gets held at customs, the cause is almost always a missing document, not the product. Below is what we have learned, and what to have ready before your first order.
I run orosy, and before we opened the API we shipped wholesale orders from Japan to shops in the US for a couple of years through our own cross-border store. We logged every order line by line: what it was, whether it could ship, and what happened on the way. This post is that log, read back with a US shop owner in mind.
What US shops keep ordering
Three product types show up again and again, from shops that have nothing to do with each other:
- Ceramic tableware. Plates, bowls, cups, small dishes. If I had to pick one thing US shops come to Japan for, it is this.
- Stationery and paper goods. Pens, notebooks, washi tape, stickers, cards.
- Wooden goods and other everyday household items.
I am keeping this at the level of product type on purpose. Each shop found its own makers and its own items, and that is their work. I am not going to list it here.
The buyers themselves are mostly gift and lifestyle shops, then cafés and coffee shops, then a long tail of other small businesses. Orders are usually small, a handful of lines, and the shops that like what they get tend to order again.
How the boxes travel
Almost everything goes by express courier. Postal express mail handles the small, light parcels. Larger boxes go courier, and courier is where the cost sits.
Courier boxes on these orders mostly ran between about 10 and 29 kg of billable weight; postal parcels were small, mostly 1 to 4 kg. Shipping is usually the largest cost after the goods themselves, and it scales with billable weight, so a few heavy ceramic lines change the picture more than a stack of paper goods. I am not publishing our past carrier invoices here: they were on a different shipping setup from the one we run today, and the number that matters to you is the one you see before you order.
Two things I cannot tell you from our records, and I would rather say so than guess. We logged tracking numbers but not arrival dates, so I do not have a transit-time range for you. And we never saw the duty bills: the shop was the importer, so duties and import taxes were settled on the US side.
What customs actually asks for
Here is the part I wish someone had written down for me earlier. The products were almost never the problem. Paperwork was. Every hold we had on a US shipment was released once the missing document went in. These are the documents that came up:
- A TSCA certification for anything that touches food or drink. For ceramic tableware the courier wants a statement under the US Toxic Substances Control Act with every shipment. We ended up preparing these as a matter of routine. Coated wood can fall under the same requirement.
- Who made it. The maker's name and address on the invoice, and for some goods a manufacturer ID code.
- Who is importing it. The shop's tax ID (EIN), and a CBP Form 5106, the form that registers an importer with US Customs. If you have never imported before, this is the one that catches people.
- Liquids. Anything liquid needs an English safety data sheet before a courier will touch it. Liquids classed as dangerous goods for air cannot go at all.
One habit that saved us a lot of questions: three plain lines on every invoice, the material, the maker's contact details, and the intended use. "Wooden chopsticks", not "chopsticks".
Before your first order to the US
- Check that it can ship to the US at all, product by product, before you build an order around it.
- Have your importer details ready. Your EIN, and be prepared to file a CBP Form 5106 if your courier or broker asks.
- Know the material. Tableware, coated wood, and anything with ink or liquid in it attract documents.
- Know who pays at the border. You do, as the importer. Our guide to customs, duties and logistics for Japanese imports walks through how that side works.
Where orosy fits now
Today you can do this through orosy's buyer portal: sign up with your business website, get reviewed (usually within about 10 minutes if your sign-up email matches your business domain, otherwise normally within 12 hours), then order on screen, through the REST API, or from your own AI assistant. The catalog that ships to the US right now is stationery, over 60,000 products, so of the three types above, stationery is the one you can order to the US today. Our stationery wholesale guide covers it. We arrange the international shipping. Before you order, the cart shows a reference figure for shipping, for information only; the actual cost is calculated afterwards and billed to you, and it can differ from that figure. Customs clearance, duties and import taxes in the US are yours as the importer.
If you run a US shop and have a question about any of this, write to me. I read the replies.