About ARES
ARES isn't a corporate venture. It's a project built from the ground up, through real conversations with real businesses, by someone who genuinely loves this industry.
Founder & CEO
Raymond is a commercial real estate researcher and automotive industry specialist based in Olympia, Washington. He is completing his Washington State Real Estate License through the Rockwell Institute and studying Business and Team Entrepreneurship at The Evergreen State College.
With direct customer discovery across 17+ businesses — including independent automotive shops, auto mall dealerships, commercial real estate brokers, and city planners across the South Sound — he founded ARES to solve a problem he kept watching independent shop owners absorb: compliant, automotive-ready property is scarce, and the tools to find it have never existed — until now.
A lifelong car enthusiast — with a particular interest in motorsport and performance driving — Raymond built ARES at the intersection of two industries he knows well, because no one else had.
The ARES Story
ARES wasn't built in a classroom or a boardroom. It was built in the waiting areas of independent auto shops in West Olympia, in conversations with performance shop owners who had run out of road to expand, and in conversations with commercial real estate professionals who understood the industry from the inside.
Over 17 customer visits with shops, dealerships, CRE brokers, and city planners, the same pattern emerged: independent shop owners are fighting real estate battles that shouldn't be this hard. EPA contamination discovered mid-deal. Zoning reclassification nobody mentioned until it was too late. Sites that looked right until the lot configuration made them unusable. The information existed — it just was never organised for the people who needed it.
ARES works with independent auto repair shops, performance shop operators, and specialty automotive service businesses in the Pacific Northwest who are planning to open, expand, or relocate — and who are tired of losing time and money to compliance problems they should have known about before they started.
"The biggest barrier to opening or expanding an independent auto shop isn't capital or demand — it's land. ARES is here to fix that."
Customer Discovery
Every one of these visits shaped the ARES value proposition.
West Olympia — Independent Repair Shop
West Olympia — Independent Repair Shop
Olympia — Custom Shop
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia — European Specialist Shop
Olympia — Performance Shop
South Sound — Automotive Dealer Group
Tacoma — Commercial Real Estate Broker
Olympia Auto Mall — New Car Dealership
Olympia — Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Olympia — City Planning & Zoning
Olympia — Commercial Real Estate
Olympia — Mortgage & Lending
Olympia — Commercial Real Estate