Originally Posted by
Rad_Schuhart
American tankers might be a 20% maximum. There are LOADS in germany and a big bunch in the UK. Also the best aftermarket boards are all made there: Beier, Elmod, Benedini, Servonaut, SGS and many more.
Many german sellers, including tamiya kit sellers even refuse to ship outside germany, not even to close neighbours like france or even Austria, so imagine how wealthy they must be.
This. When I started researching Leopard 2A4s available on the market, English Google didn’t get me very far, till I started Googling in translated German, which opened me to a whole new world of forums, builds, manufacturers and sellers. It wasn’t quite an Eureka moment as I was aware something like this did exist - I’m ethnic Chinese and do check in from time to time with the Hong Kong and Shenzhen forums (plus Hermill is in the Middle Kingdom) to see what’s going on over there.
That being said, English is Lingua Franca on the internet and any retailer intending a global reach should have some capacity to handle inquiries in that language. For me, the hint would be that they have a native-language page and an English equivalent. However it is worthwhile to note that even Tamiya’s own Japanese website has an English and Japanese version, but it is always the Japanese version that is the most current and updated.