Tamiya Spares - What has happened, what is happening.

UPDATED 26TH AUGUST: We are again taking orders for spares but you should assume that everything ordered is going to take between 6 and 8 weeks to arrive - and therefore be pleasantly surprised if they arrive earlier. Supply is NOT EXPECTED TO RETURN TO USUAL until 2021 as Tamiya are having major production and supply issues with their factory in the Philippines and have now shifted ALL RC moulds back to Japan to restart production there.

On 5th August we paused our Tamiya spares service. From this date for between 2 and 4 weeks we will not be taking further orders for spares except under some limited circumstances described at the end of this message. All spares have been removed from our site automatically for this period.

During the lockdown period, the demand for Tamiya spares hit an unprecidented high. Every month of April, May and June we received the volume of orders we would normally see in a 6 month period.

Many other hobby stores who operated during this period also saw excessive demand. Many stopped taking orders on Tamiya spares which exasperated the problem as, due to our position of being a "known supplier" for spares for over 20 years, many of their customers came to us instead.

This has "caught out" the importer, Hobby Company, who have to place orders for Tamiya goods between 12 and 14 WEEKS ahead of delivery, through no fault of their own.

As each delivery has arrived with them, it has been MASSIVELY over sold.

The irony is that we still have many thousands of pounds of spare parts in stock, yet the parts we have are by definition not the popular ones people need at present!

We have quoted the delivery dates that we have been advised by them on this page since early May to assist our customers. Unfortunately this has been counter productive, as many did not read the explanation and instead just saw a date against a part and assumed they would DEFINITELY receive it on that date - or staggeringly told us that they thought "everything" was in stock, when firstly we have never showed spares as "in stock" and at three stages during checkout there were prominent notices saying there would be a substatial wait.

The trouble was that demand was so high for most common parts that they were oversold massively by the time they arrived - for example, most tyres, most Lunch Box parts, many Hornet parts and so on - with the result that when we get a delivery, we may receive 12 of something we've ordered 40 of - 28 customers therefore end up waiting for the next (or even later) delivery.

This has come to a head with the "29th July" delivery (which itself was delayed into them and only went to picking on 5th August) that the Hobby Co were indicating contained the majority of parts. Firstly, it seems Tamiya failed to ship some items on this delivery that were expected. Secondly, whilst parts were on this delivery, there were not enough of many - for example, we only received a fraction of our orders for (again) most tyres, and many bodies, motors, screws and even things like washers were short supplied.

We understand there are two further large spares deliveries this month and a further one in early Sept. We are pausing OUR spares service until we get down to a manageable number of outstanding orders, and with the hope that a small amount of residual stock will build up from these deliveries too.

The only exception to this that we will make is that we will ATTEMPT to help you if you have bought a car from us in the last few months and need a part to keep it going. No guarantees though. Please reply to your order confirmation for your kit purchase in order that we can assist.

Neil Gorin
General Manager
5th August 2020