The Import Guys storage room is full. Japanese cars and minibikes cover the floor; it’s a squeeze to amble around the building, but you could look for hours. Cars of all colors, varieties, shapes, and sizes sprawl out, and in the corner sits a collection of Japanese video game machines. The “corner of lost hopes and dreams,” Dylan Cain, owner of The Import Guys, calls it. Cain jokes that if he moved his business to Seattle—and swept up the floor a bit—he could charge $5 a pop for tours.
Cain fell into the car-importing business. Spurred from his childhood love for Japanese cars, The Import Guys, a JDM (Japanese domestic market) importer company based in Ferndale, has been operating full-time since 2015.
“Ever since I was 12 or 13,” Cain begins, “I really wanted a Japanese car… Specifically, the Nissan 180SX.” Reminiscent of an animate being, the Nissan 180SX is chic, low to the ground, and sharp; headlights like eyes rise from the hood and stare.
Photograph by William Morton
He began his importing journey unassumingly. “I bought a car randomly online from some random website and I didn’t know what I was doing,” Cain says. “The car showed up and I somehow managed to clear customs myself, and I just didn’t stop.”
After Cain had accumulated a couple of imported cars, one of his friends asked to buy one from him. Then someone else asked for another. Eventually, he had a network of people wanting cars and The Import Guys was born.
Photograph by William Morton
Cain more or less brute-forced his way into figuring out the business. A couple of times, this caused him to make some costly mistakes. When importing vehicles, cars have a 2.5% import tax, while trucks have a 25% tax. On the first truck he imported he only charged the customer 2.5%, which came out to $250. Then he received a bill from customs for $2,500.
“Well I’m not gonna ask the guy for this money,” Cain says, who ate the cost of that first truck sale and lost money. That’s the type of businessman that Cain is. He avoids hounding customers preferring a more hands-off approach.“If you want it you can come and buy it,” he says.
Photograph by William Morton
And this business model seems to be working. At the time of writing, out of 59 Google reviews for The Import Guys, 57 of them are five stars and two of them are four stars. Nearly all of the reviews contain a response from Cain, thanking the customers for their business.
Through their ten years of operation, The Import Guys have sold cars to customers in 49 states and two other countries: Canada and Germany. Cain estimates that if you see someone driving an imported Japanese car around Whatcom County, there’s a 95% chance it came from him and his team at the Import Guys.
7038 Portal Way, Ste. 110, Ferndale, 833.536.4968, theimportguys.com
