Kicking off from relative low start, Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Van successfully steers her business to success.
From an inexperienced person
In years, Dai Hong Phat pottery has been developed strongly to be one of the most famous enterprises in domestic and foreign markets. However, what surprised us the most was the starting point of Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Van – a person not from families of pottery tradition like other pottery companies in Binh Duong Province.
It is odd for her to pursue pottery career. In 1998, Ms. Van was the owner of a construction material supplier which was also supplying industrial machines. And, by the sales of machines to pottery industry, Van had to test try the machines before delivering to her customers. It was beyond her expectation that the test production had been successful with market sales. By 2009, an European customer committed to long-term purchase of Dai Hong Phat products, prompting her to establish mass production by the help of 100 workers.
Nguyen Thi Hong Van is side by side with her major products of Dai Hong Phat brand-name. Photo: K. Vinh
At zero starting point, Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Van retold the challenges: “It was so hard to start all up. Aside from capital, market, and human resources, we were so worried about our experience. Thus, we must spend to earn experience.”
She spent very large sum to hire a Taiwanese pottery specialist to train up her staff to produce eye-catching products to meet domestic and foreign demands. Dai Hong Phat pottery has then oriented to consumers by diversified colors and models. Up to date, Dai Hong Phat has created thousands of models to introduce millions of distinct pottery products into the markets of Europe, Japan, and USA. In the meantime, domestic market is also a major channel that Dai Hong Phat has been making use of by offering eye-catching and familiar product lines to housewives. Dai Hong Phat reached its peak of exportation in 2008 by a record revenue of US$ 5 million.
To market daring
By 2008, her enterprise faced price fluctuation and resized market share due to the start of low investment into capital resources and market occupation.
Van recalled: “Those were our hardest times of starting up as we were too young with a few customers. The rocketing material prices put us in dilemma to maintain wages for hundreds of workers and product price.”
Losing major counter-partners in European and USA markets, Van rushed to nourish domestic market. Her daring attendance to domestic exhibitions has drawn much attention from Vietnamese buyers, helping Dai Hong Phat to overcome the hardship of 2008.
By 2011, Dai Hong Phat faced another fluctuation of materials causing product price to rocket and bank interest rate stays at high rate. In such situation, the reduction of input costs and savings to reduce product costs seemed to be impossible as the enterprise had used up its forces in 2008. As the matter of fact, she had to trade off losses for maintaining customers. Once again, she helped the enterprise to overcome difficulties successfully thanks to her daring actions and start-up enthusiasm in Binh Duong Province of a Saigonese – Nguyen Thi Hong Van.
Reported by Khanh Vinh – Translated by Vi Bao
