Friday, December 21, 2012

How to Order from Tokyo Fashion - Updated


Notice 12/2015: I have not purchased from Tokyo Fashion since this was originally written and do not intend to do so in the future. Their website has since changed and I am unfamiliar with current procedures. As such, I am unable to answer email inquiries regarding the ordering process. This post will be left up only as a reference in case it is helpful.

Since I wrote my original tutorial on ordering from Tokyo Fashion, their signup and payment processes have changed. I think they're a bit more straightforward now.


Tokyo Fashion (東京著衣) is a popular Taiwanese brand founded by Mayuki Zhou in 2005. Along with its sister brands Mayuki and YOCO, Tokyo Fashion is one of the top Taiwanese webstores, and they have consistently good quality. Their styles often get copied by Chinese wholesalers, unfortunately, but if you want the real thing you can buy directly from them - they ship internationally, and the price works out to about the same as a wholesale site anyway.

You have to sign up with their system to order, but then you actually order by email. Even though they do have instructions on their site, only the general instructions are in English, and I thought that non-Chinese-speakers might have some difficulty navigating, so I made a quick guide.

Part I: Signing Up
Part II: Shopping
Part III: Placing an Order

Warning: image heavy! Click on the images to expand.

Part I: Signing Up

They have two versions of their webpage. The official one is www.mayuki.com.tw/, but the one you'll want to use for signing up for overseas orders is order.mayuki.com.tw/. As you can see, it has a nice Overseas Buyer page in the top right (which the main page doesn't have).

The Overseas Buyer page is pretty self-explanatory. They have a link for estimating shipping, but it's in Chinese, so here's the cost table and calculator in English. They only ship EMS. You can check estimated shipping times here.

Click [註冊] (sign up) in the top right corner. They recommend using Internet Explorer. May not be necessary, but just a note. Their site occasionally crashes in Chrome and Firefox, and IE might help.


You'll be taken to a login page:



The left side is for current members. Fill out the form on the right side as follows:
  • Click the third radio button (國外買家&其他會員, international members and other members) 
  • Create your member ID
  • Enter your email
  • Check the box if you want promotional emails
  • Create your password (6-20 characters)
  • Confirm your password
  • Enter your birthdate (year/month/day)
  • Enter the captcha (not case-sensitive)
  • Check the box confirming that you've read their terms of service (of course you have, right?)

Click the pink button (註冊) to submit your information. You will be taken to the 訂單查詢 tab of your member page.


Part II: Shopping

Download the order form from the Overseas Buyer page. It translates most of the color names they use, and shows you how to tell what's in stock. The color list is rather long, so I haven't reproduced it here.

Green: Sold out
Red: limited quantity
Blue: in stock / Available
Purple: order in advance / restocking item

Note:  Their minimum order used to be 15 items, but the last I heard it had been changed to 5. Remember that the shipping rate per item is better if you buy more, though.

There are a couple of different ways to browse. The easiest is probably to use their main page (not the same one you used to sign up) and use the navigation bars along the top. The dropdown menus are Google Translate-able if you have the Chrome extension. 

The headers for the dropdown menus are:
  • 品牌 - brand
  • 最新商品 - newest items
  • 上衣 - tops
  • 外套 - outerwear
  • 洋裝 - dresses
  • 下身類 - bottoms
  • 皮件/其他 - belts/other

Once you pick a category, you can search by new arrivals (新品), popular items by number of sales (銷售), price (價格), and popular item by number of views/hits (點閱次數).

If you browse from the order.mayuki.com.tw page, clicking the categories on the menu bar will take you to the corresponding Yahoo auction page.

You can check their measurements page to see what each measurement means. In general, their freesize tops fit up to 36C (34C for some blouses), and freesize bottoms best fit a US size S. Some of their bottoms have S/M/L sizing, which corresponds roughly to US 2/4/6 (but check your own measurements to make sure).

Be sure to fill in the order form as shown by their examples: item number, your username, quantity, and then the item number for replacement (if your first choice is out of stock). You can add more lines to the table if you need to.

Please note: the item numbers are different for each color (and size if applicable). Be sure to pick the correct one! 

Note: sometimes they do not update their prices on their normal page in concurrence with the prices on their Yahoo auction page. The prices on the Yahoo page are more updated. To double-check the price, find the item number of the product you want (the 商品編號 listed near the top of the page, not the color-specific number) and enter it in the search window on the Yahoo page. It should pull up the updated page for that item.


Here's an example: item number 2035734. Click the color swatches to change the color in the photo to the left (the color name at the top of the screen will change accordingly). The color in this example is red, 紅色. If you scroll past the model images (cut out here for the sake of space), the colorways and corresponding names are also shown towards the bottom of the page. The other colorway here is dark blue, 深藍. 


The red colorway of this item is number 2035735 and is in stock.

First line of the measurement table:
  • Total length: 68 cm
  • Shoulder measurement: unrestricted
  • Bust: 55 cm flat, 68 cm stretched
  • Fits bust up to 36C
  • Waist: 55 cm flat
  • Fits waist up to 30"
  • Hem: 53 cm flat
Second line of the measurement table:
  • Sleeves: 70 cm from shoulder to cuff
  • Sleeve opening: 10 cm flat
  • Arm width: N/A
  • Special design points: crewneck, knit design
  • Elasticity: yes
  • Material: knit / knitting yarn
  • Thickness: medium

Part III: Placing an Order

Step 1. Double-check to make sure you have filled out the order form correctly, according to their example.

Step 2. Place the order via email.

The email address is mayuki0922@yahoo.com.tw. I used the subject line "國外訂購" (overseas order).

Send the rep your filled-in form. She'll email you once she's entered it in the system and tell you to head to http://order.mayuki.com.tw/ to check. You should also get a separate email listing all the items in your order and giving you a subtotal.

Step 3. Check to make sure that everything has been entered correctly.

Click [會員中心] (member center, scroll back up to the first image in this guide if you need help finding it) and log in to your account. You'll have to confirm that you read the same Internet fraud warning as you did when you first signed up...you have to reconfirm this every time you log in -_-; Check the box and click the button.

Click the second tab from the left (訂單查詢). You should see something like this. 


From left to right, the columns contain your order number, the date you placed your order, your subtotal, and your order status. The red date in the order status column is the date by which you need to pay. Click the pink text (按這裏付款, press here to pay) and you will see your order summary with a subtotal:



The message in gray says your shipping costs haven't been confirmed yet. 

Step 4. Confirm your order.

Email the rep and say everything looks correct (or address any issues) and she'll calculate shipping for you. I actually had a problem with my order - I ordered four items but one was out of stock; I emailed them adding a new item that had just been released on the website and they said they added it to my order and it showed up in the email they sent me, but not on my member page. I emailed them pointing this out and they fixed it for me.

Again, here's the cost table and calculator in English. Tokyo Fashion only ships EMS. The customer service rep will email you the weight and shipping cost, as well as update the total in your account for you.

Step 5. Payment.

Head back to the previous page -  the gray message will have disappeared and your shipping costs will have been added.


Click on the pink button on the bottom right. You will see a form like this:


The first section is billing/shipping information.
購買人 - purchaser (billing address)
收件人 - addressee (shipping address)

Second section refers to payment options. Check the top radio button (bottom one is for bank transfer).

Ignore the last section - it's tax stuff for businesses. Hit the button at the bottom of the page (下一步) and you'll get a popup with the summary of charges. (Note: I tried this in Chrome at first and couldn't get the popup to come up, so I switched to IE, which is their recommended browser.)




Confirm charges. The first number is what you owe, second is what you've paid (nothing so far), and the last number is the amount still owed. Click the button to proceed to the payment page. The next page might take a moment to load; be patient.


Fill in your credit card number, expiration date, and CVV, then hit the button at the bottom. The popup will close and your main window will show you your order confirmation.



You're done! Your order should be shipped in 3-14 days, depending on the stocking status of the things you ordered. If everything you picked was in blue or red (in stock), it'll probably be less. 

For information on your order, go back to the tab that says 訂單查詢 in your member center. Once they ship your order, they'll post a tracking number there for you to use (EE671002173TW below) . I've found that the tracking site they've linked does not always work, so I prefer to use the English version of the tracking site.


I hope you have found this guide useful - happy shopping!

16 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for this! I just love their clothes but I can't read nor speak Chinese at all! I was thinking of buying from their website but I'm so worried I'll do something wrong with the emailing part and everything.
    I was wondering if you know any english site that sell their stuff as well, like fashion4us.com for example?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The only authorized English resellers of Tokyo Fashion are, as far as I know, YesStyle and Asoya (which appears to be down right now). Yumart also sells some Tokyo Fashion items.
      fashion4us and many similar sites that use Tokyo Fashion images are using the stock images illegally to advertise cheap knockoffs.

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  2. Thank you for these instructions! What I remain puzzled about is the currency used. They use the $ symbol, but more than US$100 for a pair of leggings seems steep. So what kind of currency do they use?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They use the $ symbol for New Taiwan Dollars (NTD). The conversion is roughly 30:1 against the US dollar :)

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  3. Thanks! There's something called what Google translates as "wide flat waist". How does it differ from plain "waist"?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Depending on the style they give a couple of different waist measurements. Usually they give a waist measurement in inches that the item should fit, as well as the flat measurement of the garment waist in centimeters. For an elastic item, they list both the unstretched and stretched flat measurements.

      "Wide flat waist" should be the flat, unstretched measurement of the garment waist in centimeters.

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    2. Thanks so much! :) You've been really helpful.

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  4. thanks for this! i have a question about the address though. do you write the city after in the same line? like "(address) (city, state)"? hopefully that made sense haha

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used a slash to separate things that would normally be on different lines (e.g. HouseNumber StreetName/ City, State Zip/ USA)

      Delete
    2. yay thanks so much for replying and for this guide!!

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  5. Thank you so much for making this! It's been so helpful, and I've been trying to find a decent site to order from for ages.
    I'm struggling with payment though - everything has been confirmed, but when I go to pay, I don't have the option to select my country (Taiwan only) and it won't recognise my phone number. Do you know what might be the matter?
    Sorry for bothering you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've been told that the order process has changed slightly, but I haven't ordered anything for about a year so I don't know :( You may have to email them and have them manually enter your address from their end.

      Delete
    2. Ohh, I see. It looks like parts of the site in general have changed a bit since then too, because a few of the pictures are a little different. I'll try emailing them again.
      Thanks for the reply! :)

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi...
    Has mayuki's website changed? When I typed www.mayuki.com.tw, it changed into www.tokichoi.com.tw . Funny thing was I found another web address www.mayuki.com.cn . The clothes are just similar with mayuki's

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  8. Hi! Have you ordered anything from Mayuki recently? They've changed their site, and I don't find the English page anymore. I wonder did they stop international delivery?

    ReplyDelete