Vietnam’s textile industry: opportunities and challenges

Vietnam’s textile industry has increased significantly since normalizing relationships with the United States in the 1990’s. Vietnam was granted most favoured nation status (MFN) in December 2001, which led to a dramatic reduction in import tariffs in the US market. Vietnam’s induction to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2007 and the Vietnamese government’s strong [...]

Slums – Beyond the perception

Personally, I am not very fond of the term, slums. I think it is loosely defined term for a type of informal market. However, with all their problems and challenges there is a lot to learn from slums from a business perspective.
Entrepreneurism – slum areas are highly entrepreneurial, with a high degree of business activity. [...]

Key distribution issues in emerging markets – Updated

Channel strategy – companies must map out a clear channel strategy and identify which channel the selected distributor will service. A poorly defined channel strategy can severely damage any distributor roll-out. It is critical that companies understand how channels function and operate. One size does not fit all.
Selection criteria – companies need to understand the [...]

Interview: Penta Business Solutions

I recently spoke to Rasmus Buskov, Managing Director at Penta Business Solutions, a seasoned professional in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) industry in Vietnam.
TN:  What is Penta Business Solutions?
RB:  We are a team of experienced business consultants focused on providing affordable yet sophisticated open source ERP solutions, namely Openbravo, to businesses in Vietnam. One of [...]

Within arms’ reach of the retailer and consumer

In a competitive environment, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies are increasingly forced to get within arms’ reach of the retailer and consumer. CPG companies that have a Route-to-Market strategy that includes a direct focus on mom-and-pop stores are the most successful in reaching the “base of the pyramid”.
The buy-in-bulk mentality is unlikely to have a [...]

House of Sampoerna

I made a stop last week in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city. The city is also home to Sampoerna, the well known Indonesian tobacco and cloves company. The company was founded in 1913 and was the first publicly listed kretek cigarette company on the Jakarta Stock Exchange. The visit included a stop at the House [...]

Aquatabs – the Hybrid Social Distribution Model

Aquatabs – the Hybrid Social Distribution Model
Last month I spoke to Michael Gately, Marketing Director of Medentech.  The company is well known for its Aquatabs brand of rapidly dissolving tablets. It is one of the best known and most respected names in point-of-use water purification globally and is used to disinfect billions of litres of [...]

Tsukiji fish market

I recently visited the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. It is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world and is also one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind. The market is located in Tsukiji in central Tokyo.

The market handles more than 450 different types of seafood at the markets [...]

Vietnam’s intellectual property (IP) law

I recently spoke to Patsy Day, an intellectual property attorney from Rouse Legal based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Rouse is a leading global intellectual property firm, with offices in more than twenty countries. Rouse has been handling IP cases in Vietnam since 1997.
TN: Which sectors are most infringed?
PD: The sectors where we see [...]

Evolving Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)

Managing supplier relationships used to be a zero sum game. Most companies focused on short terms goals where price was the main focus. Bullying suppliers were commonplace in some organizations. Employees took great pride in “facing down suppliers” and relationships were viewed on “how much money we will make”. However, with the increase in outsourcing [...]

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