If you're already here, resellers are setting your prices on Amazon.co.jp under a Japanese name you never chose. If you're not, the hikers who want your gear can't get it. We take outdoor brands into Japan on their own terms, either way.
Free · specific to your brand · yours to keep
Some of these hit brands already being resold here. The rest hit the day you decide to enter. None of them wait for your permission, and all get harder to undo the longer they run.
Resellers import your products and list them on Amazon.co.jp and Rakuten at prices you never approved.
Written in Japanese, your brand gets spelled several different ways, so customers searching for you land on several sellers, none of them you.
In Japan, whoever files a name first owns it. If that isn't you, you end up buying your own brand back or fighting for it, both slow and costly.
Since October 2023, brands without a local entity must appoint a resident customs agent most have never heard of. No agent, no shipment.
We ran a full report on a US ultralight backpacking brand that was already selling in Japan without knowing it. Every reseller, every version of its name floating around in Japanese, the trademark position, the import block. Yours would look the same, with your name on it.
Altitude Society takes foreign outdoor brands into Japan. We are Japanese, we are bilingual, and we hike.
We started it for selfish reasons. We wanted gear we could not buy here. Getting hold of it meant an international order, three weeks of waiting and a customs form, or paying a reseller double what it cost at home.
That gap is the business. Brands all over the world belong on Japanese trails, and hikers here want them but can't reach them. We know what this market wants because we are it.
Send your brand name and website. We'll run an initial exposure check and send you what we find, no charge.