You can of course buy complete dolls. Here you have a choice of Arte Tokio's Sidh Fairy dolls, Original dolls or Character dolls. It seems these are the only ways to obtain a doll head from here. Be mindful though that the Sidh doll are smaller than the other 2, being of a 40 cm height, whilst an adult doll of the Original and Character dolls would be 60 cm tall with head attached.
I changed my mind about the doll head I was going to get after watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5aoj_D30e8&feature=related
http://www.artetokio.com/images/felice_image/fc_02.jpg
The prospect of a squishy head as opposed to the hard vinyl that is my other option; seemed like fun. For a while Felice 'Nei' was the only option that I'd like to have gotten. But there was money to be saved up still.
http://www.artetokio.com/tohart_TAMA.html
http://leaf.aquaplus.co.jp/product/th2x/characters.html
Once having put aside enough money there was another possible candidate. For those of you unaware, she is modeled after a popular Ero game Character; Tamaki Kousaka from To Heart2. She's on the Japanese version of the site, but not the English one, so I had a suspicion that I wouldn't be able to get her.
And so the enquiry began.
As I understand it for a Japanese company to export overseas is quite the ordeal. This company can sell dolls of licensed characters overseas as evident by Rin Kokonoe and Kuro Kagami from Kodomo no Jikan. For me, it turns out Tamaki is not licensed for sales overseas, so that option was not open to me. (or at least not without a flight to Japan, a prospect I am currently unwilling to entertain).
So there was Felice 'Nei'. I thought she is kinda cute, the hair seems a bit excessive, I'd prefer a different eye colour, and the dress reminiscent of a maid cafe, seemed a little silly to me. Still I was convinced that I would be happy with her and so I placed my order.
I had actually placed an order by accident some months prior to this, I intended to cancel before it said 'confirm', but placed the order by accident. Thankfully Arte Tokio accepted my explanation, and I didn't get into any trouble for it.
With my next order with the full intention of buying though I did become quite the bad customer.
You see from the website, Arte Tokio sound quite strict on how you can buy their dolls. The heads are not sold separately, doll clothing is strictly fixed and exclusive to that doll and they weren't going to sell doll they weren't licensed to sell overseas. From that, I made the false presumption that they have a stock of complete ready made dolls ready to be shipped off, and that I would be receiving my doll within days or a couple of weeks of the order being finalised.
Well it turns out they make the doll after the order is finalised. The timing of my order wasn't terribly good as it turns out, as he had a great many other orders at the same time, had a doll show to prepare for, and a Typhoon was to hit Japan. (he only mentioned he had many doll orders, the rest I infer). The doll would take a month.
That being the case, and not having paid yet, I stalled a bit and asked questions, though I did think the answer was likely to be no.
http://www.artetokio.com/english/felice_an.html
Felice 'An' comes with a body of smaller breasts. I much preferred the look of her to 'Nei' but would have liked the ARTE 060 body. So that's what I basically asked for. I figured since she hadn't been made yet, it shouldn't be all that much effort to make her with that one adjustment.
Arte Tokio is based in Japan, and as one would expect, English is not their first language. As for my Japanese it's effectively nonexistant. So communicating this proved hard. Emails bounced back and forth for a week, being pretty prompt with reply, and delayed once because of a public holiday. In the end I made a picture conveying what I wanted, and the custom order was accepted!
I don't know if they are in the habit of taking custom orders, but I'm happy they've accepted mine which is on the way now.
