One of Paper Color products is sold on Amazon. Photo: Paper Color

Vietnam needs to support enterprises to boost the export of handicrafts and thereby improve handicrafts production technology, Vu Quoc Huy, Director of the Vietnam National Innovation Center (NIC) said.

At the webinar “Exporting handicrafts on Amazon”, held this week, Huy said that Vietnam has strengths in handicrafts with thousands of craft villages, traditional products, and artisans. Due to the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses have faced difficulties in doing business, so e-commerce has become an effective business channel to help them keep business afloat.

Through the e-commerce platforms, domestic enterprises have the opportunity to bring handicraft products to more than 200 countries and territories, especially via Amazon, according to the NIC.

Tran Xuan Thuy, Southern Regional Director of Amazon GlobalSelling Vietnam said, recently, the company has continuously coordinated with Vietnamese authorities in the deployment of many activities that support small and medium enterprises to bring their goods to the e-commerce platform, with the expectation of contributing to bringing Vietnamese goods to the world.

In the past years, many local businesses have been successful in selling via Amazon’s channel. Especially, those who are manufacturing and exporting handicrafts are looking for opportunities to export to the US and European markets and want to expand their global operations through Amazon.

Paper Color, producing 3D-pop-up cards, is an example. Le Thi Thien Ngan, CEO and Co-founder of Paper Color, said selling on Amazon helps the company save a lot of operation costs, learn about the market needs, how the market operates, marketing and consumer trends as well as how to solve problems. "This helps our business grow very fast without having to go through the traditional ways," she added.

After five years of establishment, the company has exported its products to more than 30 countries in the world, focusing on North America and Europe.

Towards sustainable brands

According to Tran Quy Hien, co-founder of Ecomstone Vietnam, in order to conquer customers, the products that are listed for sale in the e-commerce channel, in addition to being beautiful and of delicate designs, must be of quality and made of sustainable and environmentally friendly materials.

In particular, products must not infringe on trademarks, because there are some businesses whose accounts are locked for being found selling items on Amazon that have copied designs of famous brands.

Therefore, businesses must be creative in terms of designs or carefully check whether those designs are copyrighted or not to avoid risks. In addition, the product needs to be compact, easy to disassemble, and to transport, Hien added.

Pham Ngoc Anh, Amazon Global Selling Vietnam Senior Account Manager, noted that Amazon gives privileges and priorities to branded sellers who sign up for Amazon's protection program, including advertising diversity, tools to protect their brand, data analysis to control their business on Amazon.

“Most importantly, the businesses need to develop a sustainable brand on Amazon,” she underlined.

According to Amazon statistics, 59% of customers choose the brands they are familiar with. When a new brand or product appears in the market, Amazon is a favorite distribution channel for its broad outreach. Up to 80% of buyers use the e-commerce platform to find new products.

Hanoi has identified boosting e-commerce as one of the important tasks for the development of the capital city's economy. This year, the Hanoi People's Committee has launched an action plan to achieve the goal of improving the ranking of its e-commerce index.

The Hanoi Department of Industry and Trade will connect and guide small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to promote their image and product brands on e-commerce platforms, organize cross-border e-commerce seminars to support key export industries, improve the capacity of export enterprises and craft villages to sell on the world's prestigious e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba.

The Hanoi Department of Information and Communications will support businesses to build mobile applications and allow customers to shop on mobile devices, instructing how to use electronic signatures to ensure information security.

The Department will develop a project to support traditional businesses in converting to digital platforms, and select a number of traditional businesses to pilot digital transformation and then expand the model.

Source: hanoitimes

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