ON THE GLOBAL FAST TRACK
WITH FREEWAY AUTO PARTS

by Erin Butler,
U.S. Commercial Service

Edward Yoon is a car guy. Even before he made cars his career, his hobby was restoring muscle cars, those oversized icons of 1970s pop culture. Ask him what he drives and he’ll wax rhapsodic about GTOs and Chevelle SuperSports. For years he’s helped his father manage his scrap metal business, Rice Recycling Corp.

In 1994, Yoon decided to get into the business himself and bought Freeway Auto Parts, a small distributor of used auto parts. He now has a three-acre salvage yard and warehouse facility in Santa Ana. Yoon buys banged-up used cars at auction, strips them of salable parts and then sells the scrap metal to his father’s company.

Earlier this year, Yoon started thinking about selling internationally and began to explore his possibilities. A referral led him to the Newport Beach U.S. Export Assistance Center, part of the global network of the U.S. Commercial Service, a Commerce Department agency that provides international business solutions to small and medium-sized U.S. companies. There, Yoon met international trade specialist Raul Lozano, who encouraged him to attend a seminar on the northern Mexican market.

International Trade Specialist Raul Lozano of the Newport Beach U.S. Export Assistance Center with Edward Yoon, owner of Freeway Auto Parts, in the company's Santa Ana salvage yard. Photo courtesy of U.S. Commercial Service.

Yoon was encouraged by what he heard. In Mexico and much of Latin America, he explains, many people drive older American cars — often models several decades old that are rarely seen on the road in the U.S. Convinced that Mexico’s border area was a promising market, Yoon immediately signed up for Gold Key Services in Tijuana and Mexicali. The Gold Key is a service in which Commercial Service experts in Mexico screened and researched potential Mexican distributors for Freeway Auto Parts, then scheduled appointments for Yoon with the top prospects. Yoon recently made an initial sale to one of the potential distributors he met in Tijuana and is looking forward to building the relationship.

Lozano continues to provide Yoon with information on the Mexican market and help with the mechanics of exporting. Yoon’s biggest shock on working with Lozano and the Export Assistance Center? “It doesn’t look like government!” he laughs. Like many people whose experiences with the federal government are limited to the DMV or the INS, Yoon was “really surprised” at the “helpful, entrepreneurial” nature of Lozano and his colleagues, who he describes as “dedicated, serious and sincere.”

Yoon recently received his MBA from the University of Southern California and says he’s “ready to go full-speed into international business.” With Lozano and the Commercial Service behind him, there’s no slowing down Freeway Auto Parts.