THE IMPORT MONSTER TEAM

WHO WE ARE.

Aaron and Roman keep things pumping here in Australia and Rob keeps it all held down in Japan, with help from his family.

How did it start? I thought you’d never ask!

For those with a short attention span. Hobby. Passion. Hate day job. See opportunity. Now here we are.

Now the tl;dr version.

It all started innocently enough, I (Aaron, owner of Import Monster) just needed parts for my Supra. Circa 2001, there were loads of importers doing cars but parts were another matter. A simple enough quest, find some brake pads for my Supra. It had the big brake package and no one in Australia could supply. Months of searching went by before I finally looked to the Mother land. In a time when ecommerce was in it’s infancy and Japanese businesses were largely closed off to non Japanese speaking people, and with no online Japanese to English translation websites to help out, this became quite the challenge. Suffice to say, the challenge was accepted. My aim at the start was just to get parts to fix my car, then modify my car and then that light bulb moment.. if I had struggled so hard, surely other people were too? From there it really became about about creating what I was looking for originally – a business in Australia that was a direct connection into the Japanese new and used parts market, but one that made it as easy as possible.

It started off small, very small really. Just bringing in some parts here and there for myself and friends, then picking some stuff up in Japan to bring over and sell to fund my own builds and projects.  Then slowly, my friends started getting me to bring over stuff for them, then their friends and after a couple of years the volumes started to grow. For the first few years it was all done from home while working full time. I was doing shift work as tech support at a telco and keeping all kinds of crazy hours.

Much the same as when I started trying to find parts for my Supra and I couldn’t find someone here with the right setup to help me out, trying to find someone to help in Japan and do things the way I really needed them done was an even bigger hurdle to leap because simply put, what we were doing was a bit different, a bit new and no one was setup for it. Add to that, that I didn’t speak a word of Japanese and it was a really tough problem to surmount.  After a chance introduction in 2003, this is where Rob entered the picture.  Being an Aussie who was living in Japan, we had no cultural or language barriers to cross. And that’s where things changed dramatically. Everything clicked, everything worked. With two people on the same page, on different sides of the planet, the way things worked was transformed. Exciting times were ahead.

By 2004, we had a proper business and a place from which to conduct business which wasn’t under my house anymore. My wife was happy about that, because “under my house” became “in the laundry” and “in the spare bedroom”. By 2005 I said goodbye to gainful employment and stepped into the unknown. With a small factory and what seemed like all the time in the world, not having to work a day job – it became my life.

A lot of years have passed since then and a lot of things have changed. The whole face of the JDM scene has been transformed and the world is a lot smaller place than it was back then. Putting it in perspective, I started the business 6 years before anyone had heard of Facebook or social media! It was all about forums, bulletin boards and email groups.  Getting cool stuff from Japan is a lot easier these days and I’m pretty proud that our company played a massive part in that.

From our very humble beginnings we have driven ourselves to expand our offerings, while keeping true to our values.  Through the journey that has brought us to where we are today, Import Monster  been trusted by tens of thousands of people to deliver from Japan to all over the globe.

Time waits for no man and by necessity, we have evolved and now we offer a lot more than just used parts from YAJ. We are trusted by some of the biggest Japanese companies to represent them in Australia.

Weds Wheels, TWS Forged, Rays Engineering and Bride Japan just to name a few.

We can also source, inspect and import a car from Japan for you – hit the link in the menu above to find out more about this service.

We have a well equipped workshop, we are dealers for Bridgestone, Yokohama, Nitto tyres and more.

With bases both in Japan and Australia, we’re perfectly placed to help you with your JDM needs.

And that’s not all. We’re always working to expand on our services and products.

We’re not done yet. This isn’t even my final form 

For those who scanned to the bottom because tl;dr. Fair enough 

For those who read it all, thank you for reading.

Cheers,

Aaron and the Monster team.