Pretty much around this time last year, Japanese-based retailer AkibaFarm confusingly announced they were going on ‘temporary’ hiatus a mere two months after opening up for business. “We’ll be back in Maaaaaarrcchhhh” they proclaimed, spiraling into the abyss.
Now having since missed their relaunch date by a mere nine months without a single update since, it’s pretty obvious they’ve bailed.
But I guess for starters, does anyone even remember AkibaFarm (or 2019 in general)? Does anyone even give a shit? I sure do, because I hyped ’em up at launch and I’ve felt like a dickhead ever since.
These guys kicked off with an obscenely massive range of goods, a really fancy-ass lookin’ site – and probably more importantly – they offered to buy banner space on my blog.
(They had a cute mascot too!)
Do you know how many sites have offered to pay money for banner space here, man? Fuckin’ like… maybe five sites in the past seven years. Three of which I agreed upon; three of which are now dead. Infernal Monkey DOT CUM is officially a curse.
All those banners you see on the sidebar now (if you’re viewing on desktop)? They’re either affiliate links or in exchange for review products every so often. I’m very happy to have ’em there, but genuinely don’t expect anyone to actually buy a spot in real-world-non-rubber-vag currency.
Anyway I guess the warning signs started when they didn’t renew for a second month. At the time I didn’t think much of it though, because whatever.
But shortly after AkibaFarm locked down their site with a big ‘maintenance’ landing page, I attempted to get in touch with them several times just to see what was happening. Any kind of update. Prior to this I’d assumed I was on pretty good terms with their PR contact. Nope. Silence.
Suddenly February 2020 rocks up – completely unaware of what its arch rival March 2020 would bring to the table – and AkibaFarm’s website shows some minor signs of life! The main page was back with a few placeholder onahole listings.
Once again I tried to contact them, only for those onahole listings to mysteriously get 404’d a few days later. Oh.
Fast-forward to roughly whatever the current day is, and AkibaFarm have completely scrubbed all mention of adult products. Everything’s gone. There’s a placeholder listing for a bloody packet of Ritz crackers. That’s about it.
… Also the entire site is in Korean now.
Mmm, expensive.
So it turns out AkibaFarm was a sister-site of AkibaStory, a long-running retailer aimed at the Korean market for importing anime figures. AkibaStory are still active to this day, however it seems they just gave up on AkibaFarm’s attempt to break off into the adult market and cater to a worldwide audience.
If I had to guess, I’d say AkibaWhatever likely ran into some shit with their supposed license to sell sex toys.
The Japanese government’s pretty hardcore about letting anyone sell… hardcore stuff, and one mistake can end your business overnight. That’s exactly what happened to MyOnahole a few years back, another retailer who suddenly vanished due to messing up their paperwork.
Sorry, I know this article thingy is a bit long and pointless, but I really hope nobody got screwed with any AkibaFarm orders. 🙁 I’ll be more careful about promoting new sites going forward.
Don’t blame yourself, no-one else will! You weren’t to know, and apparently neither were they. It’s a bummer they didn’t communicate anything about this whatsoever, though. Hope no-one got screwed over with orders.
The OtonaJP thugs took out another site.
RIP
lol, yes.
I really wanted to order from other websites many times but ended up not doing so because everyone is shut down or too expensive.
Ordered from them three times right up until they closed for maintenance. Did right by me every time. Packaging as perfect.
Super nice and pleasant to deal with. Delivery was quick with no hassles for anything. Got the order exact every time.
Can’t say enough good things about them. I miss them and lament their passing. They really knew their products and were super helpful. Sadness.
Rip, had decent prices and the one time I ordered, it arrived here in Canada faster then the usual and packaged very nicely.
OtonaJP is much more expensive for me due to shipping since they don’t sell them with SAL untracked, to my country you can only send the full version which is way too expensive for regular SAL shipping arriving in 2 weeks to 1 month.
You will be missed AkibaFarm.
Also, I know their PR contact was a korean guy because you would see the korean text / time from their e-mail client, but they did claim they only had “one korean employee”, yeah they definitely didn’t manage to keep up with their license.