Well, I’m sure many of you in the Honda world have read all about this by now, because well, it’s everywhere on forums to be seen, but I do have a lot of international readers who probably may not have seen this yet or may not even know who A&J Racing is. Well for those that don’t know, they are a pretty well known company in Canada who is known mostly for their association with J’s Racing in Japan and they happen(ed) to be one of the few exclusive distributors of their’s. I use the past tense because they no longer carry J’s products. The reason can be left up to quite the debate if you ask the guys over at A&J Racing but recently this letter surfaced on the internet which pretty much explains everything and why the relationship between the two are no more. It’s pretty sad actually. If you don’t want to take the time to read it, basically what it says is this; J’s Racing is writing A&J to let them know that they recently have discovered that A&J Racing had been copying their products and selling them as authentic J’s Racing stuff. Not only are they copying the parts, they also went and copied the packaging tape and boxes too to trick consumers into believing that their parts were legit. Pretty crazy right? It’s faking the funk at it’s worst. I guess on paper, it sounded like a great idea to the guys over at A&J but eventually somehow it got back to J’s Racing in Japan and they even went and purchased these fake goods to verify that their products had been duplicated. Here’s what the letter said…
Dear Ben Leung
First of all, it is almost 9 years since we, J’s Racing, started a business
relationship with your company in 2002. We fully acknowledge that your sales
& marketing have made the current J’s Racing popular status in the North America
and we deeply thank you for that.Unfortunately we have to present you a rather unpleasant notice today. We recently
learned that in spite of your status of an official distributor of J’s Racing, you
have been copying J’s Racing products in a factory abroad and selling the products
as the genuine J’s Racing merchandise.In order to verify the information and to get the clear evidence we actually purchased
a product from you for an inspection. Regrettably we found that you not only copied the
product but also copied our packing tape and box to make the product look exactly like a
genuine J’s Racing product.Now that we have a proof and we consider your conduct as a criminal offense, we no longer
can maintain the current business relationship with you. We have already consulted an
attorney in the British Columbia and we are ready to take strong legal actions if necessary.We strongly feel that an official distributor should be the one policing the copied or
knockoff products. It is outrageous that an official distributor itself sells a copied
product as a genuine one. This is an inexcusable conduct even from the social point of
view and we will not forgive this kind of crime.Regarding this matter, we are considering the number of actions. We will give you one
chance of providing us a sincere response and coming up with an offer for a monetaryOur actions include but are not limited to
1) Termination of the distributor status
2) A legal action to demand accounting information on the quantity of the copied products
produced and to demand a definite proof for destroying the copied products.
3) Bringing a criminal charges against A&J Racing
4) Disclosure of the issue on our website using your company’s name
5) Disclosure of the issue on the several forums in the world using your company’s nameTo name several forums,
http://www.s2ki.com/
http://www.8thcivic.com/
http://www.nagtroc.org/forums/
http://www.honda-tech.com/
http://hondamarketplace.com/
http://www.fitfreak.net/forums/
http://www.team-integra.net/
http://www.definitivedriving.com/
http://www.nsxprime.com/forums/6) Notification of the issue to all the manufacturers J’s Racing has business relationship with
7) Notification of the issue to all the companies J’s Racing has traded with
8) Notification of the issue to all the magazine publishing companies A&J Racing has relationship with
9) Notification of the issue to your father, AnthonyThose actions will inflict serious damages to your company.
In the business world, the trust is the most important. It is very regrettable you have lost our trust.
We will be waiting for your sincere response and a specific compensation offer.
The deadline is April 22, 2009.Sincerely
J’S RACING Junichi Umemoto
J’S RACING Hisaaki Murakami
Haha, fuckin crazy right? Did you see the last part? These guys are gonna go and call the dude’s father about it. Way to call the guy a bitch in a professional manner, haha. If you go to the site now, they no longer carry J’s Racing stuff. I guess it’s old news to a lot of the Fit owners and S2k guys since they were probably the first to get scammed but it’s definitely an interesting story…
Here’s a copy of the official letter too with the signatures and all…
Not only are these guys copying J’s Racing stuff, but they’ve also been seen bringing in fake Spoon parts as well. Spoon stuff I think would be easier to copy since most of it looks poorly made anyway, haha. I’m just sayin’. Look at any of their Kevlar or carbon fiber stuff and tell me you would buy it if that shit didn’t say Spoon on it…
Here’s a link to the S2ki forums where guys talk about the fake Spoon and J’s Racing stuff…
Here’s a link to the J’s Racing Japan site/blog with the post regarding the counterfeit issue. (As you can see, I’ve taken the liberty of translating it on babelfish to make it even harded for you to understand.)
It’s cool to see a company actually go and take action against people who are copying their product. You see so many knockoff products nowadays that it’s fucking ridiculous. Hopefully everything is figured out and we don’t have to see these cheesy ass taiwanese-made J’s Racing parts floating around. We demand justice!! Haha…Man I know if I was sold some fake ass J’s shit, I would raise some hell. I feel bad for these guys who are now stuck with these parts and lost their hard-earned money because some greedy fuck try to make some extra bucks off hard-working people. It’s a shame when stuff like this happens within our industry. Unfortuantely, it happens more than we know and it’s gonna keep happening too. That’s why it is good to see at least one major company going after counterfeiters…
Yeah..read this a couple of days ago..Sucks for those who spend their hard earned cash in the U.S to get fake shit from A&J in Canada..
BTW, i like the 9th notification:
“9) Notification of the issue to your father, Anthony”
Too Funny…
They need to pull some shit like this against Rota and DRAG…. forreal.
Wow I knew they were passing fake parts along but I had no idea they were making them. Pretty intense.
8th notification became a smiley face! lol. 8)
Sad.
buy American parts and this shit wouldnt happen lol…..jus messing but that sucks, I’m sure alota money has been made off those “JDM Junkies” who get-off on radiators caps that just say “Spoon” etc etc. Easy hustle if you ask me, think before you make that next “mad JDM tyte purchase.”
I think this is more of a case they sold “like” parts. That exhaust is obviously fake.
From AJR in the s2ki thread.
We have only imported J’s Racing products in the past. Whatever products J’s Racing supplies us is what we sell to customers.
Regarding authenticity of parts, over 50% of the products we’ve received from J’s Racing in the past may or may not have had J’s Racing labels, badges, engravings, or stickers of “J’s Racing”. J’s Racing did not notify us on any of these changes, so we was the importer at the time, were unaware of any changes made by J’s.
AJ-Racing actually dropped the J’s Racing line as of March 2009 due to internal issues that were never resolved in the past. In the last year, 8 North American dealers dropped J’s Racing.
Regards,
Jason @ AJR
Maybe they got a bunch of real J Racing (poor in quality like Spoon?)not packaged in J’s boxes, sold it and got called out by some self proclaimed “JDM expert”.
Wow, I feel really bad for the people who actually bought these fake products. This sucks. Some kind of action needs to be taken against these criminals that would cover the losses of its victims as well :(.
wow, thats all i got to say…
Wow, his father, man…now THAT is a callout
unbelievable…
As a receipiant of some of their fake crap I hope J’s goes after them in every way possible. Ben is a complete tool and when I tried talking to him about it he just blew me off. What a bunch of chumps. Really makes you wonder if the person who set Sam’s (A&J employee) S2000 on fire was a previously screwed customer. I’m not saying the person should have done it………………..but I understand 😀
AJR’s latest reply
Hi,
This issue in question has been discussed. We had also timely responded to the letter after consulting with our lawyers. As to protect Js Racings and AJRs privacy, the complete response will not be posted. But in summary, the situation was a misunderstanding. In other words, ALL of the Js Racing products we had sold will always have our full confidence backed as for their source and authenticity.
This issue has been SETTLED between Js Racing and AJR. Js Racing entered a silent vow as they provided no further responses since April 23, 2009. No client-side loss was caused as a result of this incident.
To be honest, I personally think it will be way more beneficial to AJR if we at the company direct this time and effort for rebuttal to, instead, improving AJRs reputation and business. But I for one cannot stand aside on this matter and let this unjust bashing slide by. We are highly disappointed at Js company and Js employees discipline. As all can see, Js Racing had refrained from acting on any of the actions they have listed in the letter as they had absolutely no rights on publicizing this matter. Instead, they had to resort to private blog as a media and post it EIGHT months later to mitigate their responsibility. Such action reflects gravely on their characters and their way of dealing. Such action cannot be tolerated. We will commence actions for any damage caused.
Quote:
Guys, nothing against you but I honestly don’t buy this aspect of your statement. If you were receiving sub-par products that were missing logo’s or improperly packaged or of poor quality you should not shrugging your shoulders and continue to selling their products for so many years. Then there is the ethical side of this question, why would you pass on questionable products to your customers? This doesn’t add up.
This is very true. What is missing here is that there also existed many products we couldnt send out and resulted in our loss. So because of this incident and their poor quality of goods delivered to us over the years, we had decided to stop importing Js Racing products for good. Js Racing has not officially stopped supplying to us. Since then, we had maintained an excellent relationship with all of our other suppliers, including SPOON, and distributors. I also urge further claims, if it would otherwise damage our reputation, to be discussed with proof rather than speculation.
Im Byron and I am the person who coordinated the seeking of legal advice on this matter. If you have any question, please contact me @ AJR (604) 279-0329. A request for closing this thread is on the way. I sincerely thank all of you for reading this far.
Regards,
Byron L. @ AJR
I personally have been dealing with A&J for almost 3 years now and have NEVER!! had a problem. I vouch for Ben he is a good guy and very honest.
Ben is very honest ?
Wait till you see all those printed somewhere else “Made in Japan” stickers ready to be put on their Made in Korea T1R Coilovers, Made in Thailand/Taiwan T1R/J’s Racing Big brake kits etc. almost 80% of their T1R shit are made in Taiwan, yet they put Made in Japan stickers on them huh?
way to go.
Go look in the drawers at their front desk, you might find a stack of those stickers.