So, some, if not most of us know the pain of needing specialty items for our dolls, and sometimes finding those items isn’t easy.

I’d gone looking for some small iris eyes for my upcoming doll, Serenade Doll Suu. While I was at it I figured I’d try a pair for my Dollshe Saint as well! He’s a finicky doll and it’s taken me a long, long time to get him close to the way I want him. After exhausting most of the options everywhere else, I happened upon a link to Taobao and started searching there. Low and behold, I found something that suited what I was looking for! Then I had to figure out how to, you know… Buy it.

I found Taobao Focus through google, and after reading a couple reviews I decided to give them a shot. I was a little wary at first, just because I’d never had an agent purchase anything for me, but it was extremely easy! You just need the Taobao link of what you want to buy, input it to their website, and add it to your cart. They were prompt to update the status of my order, and even quicker to ship it after my payment. They do give you the option of either airmail or EMS, and once the item does ship, they have 17track built into their website, which is a really awesome service that can track numbers from all over the world. As a side note, 17Track also has an app that works great.

Another note about their service: They’ll actually take pictures of the items and post that to your account as well. You have 7 days after the purchase date to report something wrong with your order, so a feature like this is essential if you’re using airmail. It also gave me a sneak preview of my new eyes, which had me giddy. Overall, I strongly recommend their service and plan on using them many more times in the future!

For anyone who has never heard of the site and have taken an interest, here’s some tips for buying from Taobao:

•  DO NOT buy dolls from Taobao. If it looks too good to be true, it’s definitely too good to be true! The doll is probably a recast.
• The quality may not be as good, depending on what you buy. A lot of times you get what you pay for so I recommend buying things that would strike you as difficult to mess up, hehe.
• This isn’t necessarily doll related, but if you’re purchasing clothes (for yourself) from china, keep in mind their sizes run smaller than ours. If you wear a medium size shirt here, you probably wear a large over there. I can confirm this from actually going clothes shopping in China myself. Not very fun if you’re tall.
• When searching Taobao, try to simplify search terms. You’re probably using the built in translator, and some words just don’t… Translate well, for lack of a better word. If certain terms don’t work, try revising them. Eventually you should see something. The term BJD does work, by the way.