About Japan OEM Navi
Japan OEM Navi helps small brands worldwide get products made by Japanese craft factories — the workshops of Seki (blades), Imabari (towels), Arita and Hasami (porcelain), and a dozen other regions that have made one thing superbly for generations.
Brands from Tatcha to Miyabi have shown that Japanese manufacturing builds premium brands (see the case studies). But until now the playbook was closed to small teams: factory information existed only in Japanese, factories didn't answer English email, payment meant international wires with no protection, and specs got lost in translation. None of those barriers is about quality or willingness — they're operational. This site exists to remove them, one tool at a time.
How it works — the whole journey
Find
Search factories across 15 craft categories, filtered by minimum lot, material, and region — with the details in English.
Communicate
Japanese factories rarely process English email. Every factory page has an inquiry builder that writes your first message in polite Japanese, and the Spec Sheet Builder turns your requirements into a bilingual document the factory can read directly.
Verify quality
Order an existing-product sample by credit card through the Sample Purchase Service — no international wires, no Japanese bank forms. We buy from the factory and ship to you.
Produce
Move stepwise from sample to prototype to a first production run, with the industry-standard safeguards (paid prototypes, approved samples, revision limits) built into our guides and templates.
Ship
Learn the export basics in the shipping guide, or keep finished goods in Japan and ship each order worldwide with Japan Warehousing & Global Fulfillment.
Our listing standard — not everyone gets in
We only list manufacturers that explicitly state on their official site that they accept OEM / custom / semi-custom orders. "Probably does OEM" isn't enough. And we mark how far each listing has been verified:
- No badge (Listed) — based on publicly available information
- Verified — details confirmed directly with the factory
- Transacted — has completed sample or production orders through this site
Who runs this
Japan OEM Navi is operated by Fanaso Inc., a Tokyo-based company (Japanese corporate details on our legal notice). The directory is free to use; paid services like the Sample Purchase Service are quoted transparently before you pay anything. For partnership or press inquiries, use the contact on the legal notice page.