I live in USA. Rohloffs are extremely rare here, I have only seen one other Rohloff and that one was on a bike used by a Dutch tourist. The exclusive USA distributor does not like to sell just the hub, they want to charge exorbitant prices for a complete wheel. I chose to look elsewhere.
In USA we can buy from Europe without paying VAT. I initially ordered it from Star Bike, but when I went to pay, their website said they would not ship Rohloffs to USA, so that was a waste of time. I then tried to order one from Bike24. My credit card company suspected fraud, so I had to make three phone calls to my credit card company to get the payment to go through. My Rohloff finally got to me from Bike24. I expected to pay duty on it, but it arrived without any duty fees - I got lucky.
I build my own wheels. (I worked in a bike shop before I went to college, I have built lots of wheels.) I think I saved roughly $200 to $400 (US Dollars) by buying the Rohloff directly from Germany and lacing up my own wheel.
I got the rim (Andra 30) from SJS when I ordered my Nomad frame from them. SJS provided (at my request) one normal 36H rim and one 36H rim drilled for Rohloff. It was a bit of effort to find the right length spokes since the Rohloff flange is so big, but finally found spokes.
If you order a Rohloff from Germany, you might try to buy the Rohloff spoke package from them if you know which rim you will use, that would simplify your search for spokes. Then once you find the wheel builder you want to use, make sure that they read the Rohloff instructions so that they lace up the wheel properly. Also, SJS has noted that they had lots of spoke breakages at the nipple end of the spoke until they realized that they needed to make sure that the spokes did not take too much of a bend at that point, that is why I asked SJS for a Rohloff drilled rim. My point here is that your wheel builder should take extra care to avoid having much bend in the spoke at the end of the nipple. I used Sapim nipples, they might help compared to other nipples.
A side note: I placed another order with Bike24 a couple weeks ago, this time I used a different card. No problems this time, but this new order is much smaller. This order included bigger jugs of Rohloff hub oils, I decided to buy in volume.
