Japanese have recently taken rapid-fire steps to enter the Vietnamese fashion market. Stripe International has taken over NEM Fashion, a Vietnamese owned company which has incurred big losses over many years.

Stripe International has taken over NEM

In 2018, Uniqlo spent tens of million of dollars to acquire 35 percent of Elise, a Vietnamese women’s fashion brand. Sources said Uniqlo then had to spend much more than Elise’s chartered capital in the deal. The Japanese fashion brand is making hectic preparations to open its first shop in Vietnam.

The Japanese brand will compete with MUJI, also from Japan, which is about to set up a retail chain in Vietnam, slated for 2020, to sell a variety of products, including clothes.

NEM has announced a plan to expand business in HCMC and Da Nang this year.

NEM’s selling prices are higher than the average income of people in the Vietnamese market. Stripe this year plans to launch a new brand with products affordable to medium income earners in smaller cities.

Stripe stated that it wants to become the No 1 manufacturer of fashion clothes for women by the end of this fiscal year. It also wants to become No 1 in value with revenue expected to increase by 30 percent this year to 5.2 billion yen, or $46.4 million.

Meanwhile, European fashion brands have been in Vietnam for several years. The debut of Zara and H&M was very successful and they continue to be popular.

More recently, an Italian fashion brand has entered Vietnam by cooperating with Johnathan Hanh Nguyen, a distributor of many foreign fashion brands in Vietnam.

OVS is very popular in Europe. In Italy, it is the direct rival of H&M and holds 15 percent of the market of clothes for children aged 0-14.

While more and more foreign fashion brands flock to Vietnam as they can see the great potential of the market, Vietnamese brands have had to scale down their operation or leave the home market.

Blue Exchange, Ninomax, PT 2000, Canifa and Bamboo, which were famous in the past, have seen the number of shops decrease dramatically.

Vietnamese, who favor foreign brands and have increasingly high income, now tend to buy foreign instead of Vietnam-made products. Vietnam ranks third in the world in number of people favoring foreign branded goods, just after China and India.

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Thanh Thuy