Retrieved from Airsoft Hawaii on January 11, 2010:

Interview with Zero-Ops
By Blake Abe

With over a decade of involvement in airsoft, Alan Nii has been a part of the Hawaii airsoft scene since the early days. At the age of 14, Alan started playing with Airsoft Hawaii. Since then, he's experienced the full range of the airsoft scene as a player, team leader, event coordinator, and PowerEdge Hawaii employee, technician and referee. And now with Zero-Ops, Alan adds the position of store owner to his already impressive airsoft resume.

"In all honesty after working at Poweredge Hawaii, we had no intention of running an airsoft store," says  Alan, "rather an automotive shop that supplied items DIRECTLY from Japan, no middlemen just direct sales. A year had passed and we had started doing a few upgrades maintenance on AEG/Pistols/Bolt Action Rifles for old clientele. The Automotive crowd would constantly see gun cases go in and out of the shop many commenting that they knew and regularly participated in airsoft games."

Since the automotive shop was stable and growing, Alan decided to start supplying airsoft parts and accessories from Japan to local players. The concept would be the same as the automotive shop in that the parts would be brought in directly from Japan and would represent the high quality custom, rare, or Japan market only parts that are virtually unknown to the US airsoft market. At the same time, these products are priced to match the prices in Japan, providing an incredible value to their customers.

The Zero-Ops Division of Alan's business started in February of 2005.
"Zero Ops was a name originally created by a team mate by the name of Gavyn Abe. It was originally designated for the store team but as time passed it was used as the Gun Division of the parent JDM automotive store."

In the months since their opening, Zero-Ops has enjoyed phenomenal growth as they provide products like Tanio Koba Hop-Twist barrels, Firefly hop-up packings and Super Core pistons to the local and online airsoft community.
"Our primary problem has been supplying the demand. Items do not remain idle for very long. Usually in 1 week we are running on a skeleton inventory. The only other problem is keeping up with the ever evolving technology and utilizing it's function on current standard production guns."

Unlike other airsoft stores and businesses, Zero-Ops does not cater to the mainstream needs of airsoft enthusiasts. You will not find stacks of AEG's or gas pistols for sale, and you probably won't recognize many of the brand names of the products you find here. Zero-Ops specializes in bringing the latest and best Japanese upgrade parts to the US airsoft enthusiast.

In addition to products, Zero-Ops also offers custom tuning for airsoft guns. The underlying philosophy behind their tuning is to provide the best possible balance of durability, accuracy, consistency, power and speed all in one package. The combination of the correct parts and tuning along with a strong desire to produce an effective and reliable gun is the commitment Zero-Ops makes for every gun they work on. "Our tuning is strictly Japan style which means you get what you pay for, and you get what we promise you, nothing less. Our custom made guns do not leave the store unless all the gun engineers all pass it on terms of performance." If any of the engineers feels the gun is lacking in any aspect of performance, the tuning process starts over to address the concern.

Related to the tuning aspect of Zero-Ops is their relationship with Killer Studio in Japan. This relationship started back when Alan was one of the team leaders for Kaisoku Combat. Zero-Ops has the official status of being Team Killer Studio USA. When asked about how this came about, Alan replies "The base group is named Kaisoku Combat. We used many of their Products and Killer Studio was closing down, since we personally knew and respected the people we asked the owners if we could represent them here in the US. They were honored to have us use the name thus began Team Killer Studio USA."

The current focus for Zero-Ops will continue to be providing premium grade Japanese parts to the US airsoft Market. In the future, Zero-Ops will be expanding to offer custom guns and products from shops in Japan. There are also plans for a line of Zero-Ops custom guns.

As a part of the local airsoft community, Alan has seen the progress that has been made over the years and feels that airsoft in Hawaii will continue to grow. At the same time, he hopes that airsoft will branch out in new directions with more special events to cater to the various aspects of airsoft that are seen in Japan. Events such as target shooting and IPSC style competition are already popular in Japan, and hopefully they can enjoy similar success here in Hawaii.

Check out the Zero-Ops web site at http://www.zero-ops.com