Multinational brands have been dominant in the personal and home sectors

About 35 million Vietnamese use their products, from shampoo and toothpaste to tea and ice cream. The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector is growing well thanks to the rapid development of the middle class, modern retail channels and e-commerce. 

In the personal care product segment, five leading manufacturers are all multinationals, Unilever, P&G, Unicharm, Kimberly Clark, Colgate Palmolive and Unza. The fact shows that Vietnamese have higher confidence in foreign brands than in domestic brands.

As for home care products, Lix is the only Vietnamese company dominant in the urban market. In rural areas, there are more Vietnamese, including Dai Viet Huong and My Hao. 

Dai Viet Huong, which owns Abba detergent brand, E100 skin care and Ramus shampoo, even surpassed the big brand P&G in the last three years in the rural market.

Vietnamese brands

Though some Vietnamese brands such as Dai Viet Huong, Lix and My Hao still have their customers, domestic brands are fading in the home market.

Most of them target the low-cost market segment and earn money from doing outsourcing for big brands and from exports.

A Euromonitor report released in 2016 showed that Unilever’s Sunlight brand held 56 percent of the dishwashing liquid market, while its P/S and Close-Up brands held 46 percent of toothpaste market share, Pond’s and Vaseline 12 percent of the skin care market, and Wall’s 10 percent of the ice cream market.

P/S was once a Vietnamese brand but was sold to Unilever many years ago. 

P/S is not the only Vietnamese cosmetics brand falling into foreign hands. The other names include Da Lan and X-Men which were sold to Colgate Palmolive and Marico.

More recently, one more cosmetics brand was transferred to a Japanese investor.

“The business potential is great, but we don’t have resources. We have to mortgage assets for bank loans and cannot access preferential loans,” said Nguyen Van Ngu, the founder of Ngu A Chau Company, when explaining the reason to sell the 10-year old company.

Ngu A Chau is well known to hair salons in southern provinces for the KANAC brand. Sources said the products of A Chau hold 10 percent of market share. The products are distributed through 200 general sale agents.

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