To all current and potential clients:
For the past several days, I've been contemplating about closing my hunting service and had reached my final decision today. After one year and 50 days of providing my hunting service to a total of 146 clients, the Tokyo Hunter service is now officially closed from today onwards. I will no longer be accepting any new requests from anybody except for close friends.
It had always been on my mind that I had to close my hunting service someday, but I never imagined that it would be so soon after the first anniversary of my service. The first 6 months was fairly relaxed as my service was relatively unknown at the time and there weren't a lot of emails and orders to handle. However, as my service and blog site began to grow in popularity, email enquiries and order requests started pouring in to the point where it sometimes took me until 1-2am almost every night to reply to all emails and completing order requests. Keep in mind that I was providing this service as a side business and I always return home from my full-time job at 7-9pm every weeknight. As a result, I no longer had the time to enjoy the things I love like watching anime (still got a long list of shows I've yet to watch), playing video games (my PS3, Wii, and PSP are collecting dust but I do play my DS during trips), building model kits (a current kit project remains untouched for the past 8 months), and the latest toy purchases for my collection are stacked up in a corner and yet to be opened. I am a guy that values my personal time over the opportunity to make more money. And besides, selling stuff on eBay is a whole lot more lucrative (view eBay feedback profile and past auctions) and easier to handle compared to the little commission fees I charged for my service. Keep watch on my auctions page for future listings of exclusive items with cost price starting bids!
I frequently travel to Akihabara and Nakano nearly every weekend when I first started the service, but as time went on, I found that to be too costly and time consuming since I live in Tatebayashi city which is roughly an hour and 30 minutes away by train to Akihabara and add another 30 minutes or so to Nakano. It is difficult to find clients' wanted items as I had to go through each hobby store in Akihabara and Nakano to hunt them down and had to leave empty-handed sometimes, which is why I'm heading down to Tokyo only once a month now or whenever there are events to attend. Add to the fact that HLJ will be relocating to its new office this November in Sano city and I had to move as well to live close to the new office, it will add another hour or more to my commuting time to Tokyo due to the 1 train an hour schedule from Sano to Tatebayashi to change stations for the trip down to Tokyo.
One of the main reaons why I had to close my hunting service is due to the increasing amount of work I had to do at my full-time job, working at home in the evenings and weekends sometimes to get them done, which results in less time to handle clients' emails and order requests and even lesser time for myself. My full-time job will have to come in first priority over everything else.
To clients who still have outstanding orders with me, I will handle your current orders but I won't be taking any more additional requests.
As for the future of this blog site, it will remain open with haul posts, event coverages, new auction listings, and some random postings if I have time to write them. There will be no changes to the Tokyo Hunter name even though I no longer run the hunting service. It's an established name now and I like it, too!
Thus ends the Tokyo Hunter service. It's been a great experience to help out clients from around the world and made lots of good friends along the way.
Thank you very much for your support!
Joseph Tsai
For the past several days, I've been contemplating about closing my hunting service and had reached my final decision today. After one year and 50 days of providing my hunting service to a total of 146 clients, the Tokyo Hunter service is now officially closed from today onwards. I will no longer be accepting any new requests from anybody except for close friends.
It had always been on my mind that I had to close my hunting service someday, but I never imagined that it would be so soon after the first anniversary of my service. The first 6 months was fairly relaxed as my service was relatively unknown at the time and there weren't a lot of emails and orders to handle. However, as my service and blog site began to grow in popularity, email enquiries and order requests started pouring in to the point where it sometimes took me until 1-2am almost every night to reply to all emails and completing order requests. Keep in mind that I was providing this service as a side business and I always return home from my full-time job at 7-9pm every weeknight. As a result, I no longer had the time to enjoy the things I love like watching anime (still got a long list of shows I've yet to watch), playing video games (my PS3, Wii, and PSP are collecting dust but I do play my DS during trips), building model kits (a current kit project remains untouched for the past 8 months), and the latest toy purchases for my collection are stacked up in a corner and yet to be opened. I am a guy that values my personal time over the opportunity to make more money. And besides, selling stuff on eBay is a whole lot more lucrative (view eBay feedback profile and past auctions) and easier to handle compared to the little commission fees I charged for my service. Keep watch on my auctions page for future listings of exclusive items with cost price starting bids!
I frequently travel to Akihabara and Nakano nearly every weekend when I first started the service, but as time went on, I found that to be too costly and time consuming since I live in Tatebayashi city which is roughly an hour and 30 minutes away by train to Akihabara and add another 30 minutes or so to Nakano. It is difficult to find clients' wanted items as I had to go through each hobby store in Akihabara and Nakano to hunt them down and had to leave empty-handed sometimes, which is why I'm heading down to Tokyo only once a month now or whenever there are events to attend. Add to the fact that HLJ will be relocating to its new office this November in Sano city and I had to move as well to live close to the new office, it will add another hour or more to my commuting time to Tokyo due to the 1 train an hour schedule from Sano to Tatebayashi to change stations for the trip down to Tokyo.
One of the main reaons why I had to close my hunting service is due to the increasing amount of work I had to do at my full-time job, working at home in the evenings and weekends sometimes to get them done, which results in less time to handle clients' emails and order requests and even lesser time for myself. My full-time job will have to come in first priority over everything else.
To clients who still have outstanding orders with me, I will handle your current orders but I won't be taking any more additional requests.
As for the future of this blog site, it will remain open with haul posts, event coverages, new auction listings, and some random postings if I have time to write them. There will be no changes to the Tokyo Hunter name even though I no longer run the hunting service. It's an established name now and I like it, too!
Thus ends the Tokyo Hunter service. It's been a great experience to help out clients from around the world and made lots of good friends along the way.
Thank you very much for your support!
Joseph Tsai
