J’s Racing to call A&J Racing’s father…

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 monetary

Our 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 name

To 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, Anthony

Those 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.)

Here’s a link to the J’s Racing Japan site where they explain the comparisons between the real and fake Ti exhausts.

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…