Zenmarket Review - J-Pop Paradise!

As an avid J-Pop fan, I'm always on the lookout for singles and albums to add to my collection. It can be difficult to track down older or more expensive titles online, but recently I've discovered a new service to purchase CD's from. For about the past year, I've been looking into using a shopping service in Japan to purchase CD's from and found there was quite a few available. During my research, I came across Zenmarket who helps you purchase items from Japan from a variety of sources. Have to say that Zenmarket is by far the best J-Pop online store I have ever used. Thought I'd write a review about my experience with the service and explain how Zenmarket works. You can check out Zenmarket for yourself here!

First here are the items I purchased from Zenmarket as I will reference this order in my review. I was absolutely over the moon to find this set and still can't believe how much of a good deal it was! The set I purchased was 12 E-girls singles and 8 Flower singles for 617JPY (about $7.40AUD and fees and shipping not included). That is such a good deal because normally it costs me about $13AUD or $15 per single when I purchase them from my normal online stores. You may notice in the photo that the singles do not have jewel cases. The seller had just removed the jewel cases as some people do for easy storage. I'll explain later what I ended up doing with the singles in regards to the jewel cases.

My Zenmarket order!

What is Zenmarket?
Zenmarket is an online shopping service that allows customers to purchase items from Japanese online stores. Most retailers in Japan do not allow international customers to purchase directly from their stores or use auction/second hand sites (such as Yahoo Auctions). Zenmarket helps international customers solve this problem by allowing them to purchase from a variety of online stores and bid on live auctions through their site. It is available worldwide and uses a variety of shipping methods at affordable prices.

The main reason I used Zenmarket was for J-Pop singles and albums. I was finding it difficult to find items I wanted online at a reasonable price or even at all as some had gone out of print. So after researching a few different shopping services such as Buyee, I settled on using Zenmarket because of their easy to use website, low prices and range of products.

Searching For Items
First you need to decide on what item you would like to buy on Zenmarket. I wasn't really after a particular item at first, I just looked a variety of CD's I was interested in and was amazed at how good the prices were in the Yahoo Auctions section. I nearly fell off my chair at all the items that were available, some I thought weren't even available anymore! I'm going to focus on buying J-Pop CD's in this review as that is what I'm the most experienced with in regards to Zenmarket and other online stores. When searching for items, it's best to think about the particular group or CD you are after. For example, I search for the following terms when looking for items for my collection:

• E-Girls single or E-Girls album. I typed in E-Girls E.G. Crazy for listings of just that one album.
• KARA single
• KARA single set
• Crayon Pop ラリルレ
• Orange Caramel CD
• MOMOLAND Best

I found sometimes if I searched for singles, it would not work if I typed in the word singles. It worked better when I used the word single. The Crayon Pop search example shows that more listings will appear if you use the Japanese title of the song rather than the title RaRiRuRe. I like how you can search by a number of terms such as price, buyout price and time. Sometimes when I'm bored, I like to scroll through all the listings on Zenmarket to see what interesting items people are selling.

Example of the listings for 'E-Girls single'

The descriptions vary on listings as that is up to the seller themselves, but I found out enough information about items I was interested in by what was written in the description. Listings display the current price and buyout price, so you can see what it is currently going for price wise. The time left on the auction and other information such as product and payment details are listed. Zenmarket will inform you on the listing page if you are unable to purchase from particular sellers, so keep an eye out for that. You also add listings and shops to your watchlist which is handy when you are keeping track of multiple items.

For my item, I searched for 'E-Girls single' and came across a listing that I found quite interesting. It listed that the seller was selling 20 singles from E-Girls and Flower for 617JPY. After I first saw it, I left it for a few days but I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I just said 'Hey, why not buy it and see how it goes'. So I ended up making an account on Zenmarket and buying the item. I just had to see what on earth this set was as I couldn't believe someone was selling all those items together for such a cheap price. The listing was easy to understand and the seller listed what version the singles were (I'm only really collecting CD Only versions currently) and the condition of the singles.

Bidding & Prices
One of the things I was scared about with shopping services was bidding on yahoo auctions. Zenmarket literally makes it the easiest thing ever and provides simple instructions on how to bid on auctions. I have to say Zenmarket has one of the easiest to understand help sections on an online store I've seen. It really made me feel comfortable and safe about using the service.

So to bid on auctions, all you need to do is load funds into your Zenmarket account (more on that soon) and place a bid on or buyout the item you are interested in. You need to load enough funds into your account to cover the cost of your bid as well as the 300JPY per item Zenmarket service fee. I always like to load the amount that the seller has stated for shipping as well so that I have it ready for Zenmarket. There also is a system for automatic bidding that bids on an auction on your behalf once you've set the maximum price of your budget. I did not use this service as I purchased the E-Girls set via the buyout price. This means that I brought the item at the buyout price stated on the listing instead of bidding.

Once you purchased an item or won an auction, you will recieve notifications from Zenmarket that the item is yours! Zenmarket will now buy the item from the seller for you and have the item shipped to their warehouse. It's super easy! You don't really need to do much once you've won your item besides organise and pay for your packages. It takes a few days for all of these activities to happen and Zenmarket keeps you informed of the status of your order on your account page. More about packaging and shipping later on in the review.

Now prices for me would have to be one of the best things about Zenmarket. They have the cheapest service fee I've seen for shopping services at 300JPY. You can't beat that! Shipping costs are reasonable for shipping items to where I'm located in Australia. Prices for listings vary but they are all great value. I've seen albums that would normally cost me $90AUD to buy listed for $10AUD. Most stuff is used, but that doesn't matter a huge amount to me as I'm just looking for items for my collection and the listing will tell you what's included (i.e. most sellers have taken out the hand shake tickets or photo cards usually). There are also new or unopened items available in the Yahoo Auctions section as well as autographed or Japan Exclusive and Fan Club editions available. Normally I buy my J-Pop singles and albums from YesAsia, but I can get better value buying singles and albums second hand straight from Japan with Zenmarket. Plus I can find out of print and rare CD's that I would've never had dreamed of finding.

Account
It's simple to sign up for an account on Zenmarket and there was a promotion for 300JPY free credit when I signed up. Much appreciated and went to good use I must say. The account has the following sections: Main, Messages, Events, Watchlist, Parcels, Payments and Settings. It's super easy to navigate and all types of payments you have made are listed under the payments section which is handy to keep track of your spending. You can use a variety of methods to load funds onto your account and some fees are involved with certain ones. I use the Paypal method to load funds which works fine and is quick to transfer. You can also withdraw any funds left in your account within 180 days from your last payment if you paid with Paypal or via credit/debit card (via Stripe). More information about that can found in the help section of the site. The picture below shows an example of the Events page of your account. You can see all the events related to your order and account.

Example of the Events Section on Zenmarket.

Shipping
Once your item has reached the Zenmarket website, you can create a package. If you have ordered multiple items through Zenmarket, you can wait until they all reach the warehouse as you can consolidate orders into the same package for shipping. When your items are all ready, you just need to select to create a package and add any items you want shipped to it. Items can be stored at the Zenmarket warehouse for a 45 days free of charge and 50JPY per day after the 45th day. You can choose which shipping method you would like to use, however you can easily change this before payment and shipment. I wasn't sure which method to use at first so I just chose one that I thought was suitable for small packages. I ended up changing it later to the cheaper option. You can also order photos of your package if you wish and there is a 1000JPY fee to repack the package if you are wanting to change the contents. Shipping insurance is included in the 300JPY per item service fee which is great. Zenmarket will inform you once your package is ready and ask you to confirm the shipping address and cost. Here is where I changed the shipping method to the cheaper option as I like to keep shipping costs low with online orders. I used the DHL Packet option with the time frame of 2 - 3 weeks. Now this is where the tricky part comes with ordering on Zenmarket. You do not know the exact cost of shipping until the later stages of your order but it is easy to calculate the approximate cost using the calculator on the site. Always keep in mind that international shipping is not free and you need to take this into consideration when budgeting how much your item will cost. My order weighed 730g which is about the weight of 7 or 8 normal jewel case CD's. So now I use that method of weighing CD cases and K-Pop albums (of strange sizes) to guess the approximate shipping costs. Shipping to Australia for me cost 1263JPY which is reasonable and about the normal price for orders coming from Japan. I've payed more on Amazon Japan for an order of similar items so I was happy that it wasn't crazy expensive. This was the cheapest and slowest option though, and you can pay more for faster methods (I believe it was around 1700JPY for the next option). Next Zenmarket will prepare your order for shipment and then the wait begins! Tracking is provided which is always useful. If you've read my K-Pop & J-Pop Online Store Reviews from last year, you'll know how much I value tracking numbers when buying stuff online.

Packaging
It took just over a month for me to receive my order. The shipping method I chose stated 2 to 3 weeks and I was able to track my package the entire way from Japan to Australia. For some reason, my package took the scenic route to Germany but I believe this was due to me using the slowest shipping method which may have been by boat (do they still use boat transport was something my friend asked me). So that's something to keep in mind when choosing shipping methods and it was my first time using Zenmarket so I was new to the whole process. I did send a message to customer service about my order and they were all so lovely and helpful. Another great feature about Zenmarket, top notch customer service!

Now onto the package! The packaging was sturdy with plenty of bubble wrap and nothing was damaged. Zenmarket included a little letter with the order thanking me for using their service, how cute! Here are some photos of the packaging of my order and the bottom photo shows how perfectly the CD's were wrapped.

All packaged perfectly!

Lovely little thank you note inside the order.

Always appreciate the bubble wrap!

So here are the gems I purchased from Zenmarket and I'm just thrilled to have them in my collection. Can't believe I crossed off so many items on my J-Pop wish list so quickly! Honestly I was only after the Diamond Only and Dance Dance Dance singles, so it was amazing to get so many others as well. I've never gotten into Flower so I'm excited to listen to those. Pleased that most of the singles came with the OBI as I love to collect those. I will be posting individual reviews of each one of the singles over the coming months and I've been listening to them non-stop. Here's some photos of the singles in the sleeves they came in.

You may remember early on in the review I mentioned that the singles didn't come with the jewel cases. The seller was selling the singles basically without the original jewel case. So the singles included the following items: CD, Lyrics booklet, backing and OBI strip (some didn't come with the OBI). Sounded fine to me when I saw the listing as it's super easy to replace jewel cases. Once I received my order, I just went down to Officeworks and brought some clear jewel cases and inserted the contents into those. I used to use this trick years ago when I used to buy second hand CD's at record fairs. Some of the Flower singles were actually limited edition versions which I was shocked at as I didn't know I would be getting those rare ones! They don't actually fit in standard size jewel cases so I'm going to get some single jewel cases for those. Here's a photo of two of the singles fitted into new jewel cases. They look just like new!

Finally have E-Girls Dance Dance Dance & Diamond Only singles!

Conclusion
Overall I'm incredibly happy with Zenmarket and their services. The site is simple to use and everything is detailed in the help section if you run into any troubles. Customer service is always happy to help and are just wonderful. The Yahoo Auctions part of the website has opened up a whole new world of online shopping for me and has given me the opportunity to find new CD's for my J-Pop (and possibly K-Pop!) collection. Other shopping service sites confused me, but Zenmarket has such a great layout that it makes searching and identify prices a breeze. Highly recommend Zenmarket for anyone looking to buy J-Pop or any other item from Japan. I don't even want to think about the amount of Rilakkuma stuff I could buy on there. So if you interested in getting great deals on items from Japan, check out Zenmarket here!

I've actually placed another two orders with Zenmarket this week which have gone smoothly. I purchased a set with three E-Girls singles that I had been eyeing off for months. I was surprised it was still listed since the last time looked at it about a month ago and brought it straight away. Also picked up a set of five KARA singles for a good price. Zenmarket has so many KARA singles and albums available, it's like a dream come true because I've been wanting to work on completing my KARA collection for years. I've already got a few albums from them which you can find in my J-Pop Collection post from last year. I'm also looking forward to finding Orange Caramel ones on there as well as rare Crayon Pop ones. I've seen a few of the single covers that were limited to Japan on there that I would be interested in getting. And of course, I'll be using Zenmarket to track down those pesky Tower Records exclusive CD's that elude me. Hoping to pick up the CLC and MOMOLAND ones this year sometime. Another thing I'd love to try out on Zenmarket is buying second hand books and magazines. There's a few issues of Pikopuri I'd love to pick up and I would like to try ordering them second hand through Amazon Japan if possible.