Returning to Vietnam after attending the TikTok Southeast Asia Impact Forum 2023 in Jakarta in mid-June, the CEO of Ba Thuc Food, Tran Phuong Dung, and her husband went to Dong Thap for a two-day trip to help local farmers learn how to organize livestreams on TikTok to sell farm produce.

Born in 1993, Dung has been working for 10 years and has changed jobs frequently. She liked marketing but registered to study finance as advised by parents. After finishing school, she got a job at a commercial bank in HCM City and received a stable monthly salary. The job is the dream of many people, but not for Dung, who was bored as she had to stay in the office all day and disliked a job which relates to numbers.

Later, she quit the job and became a seller of building materials. The business was good and she was always among workers with the highest revenue. After she met Phan Minh Thuc, her now husband, she decided to shift to trading in lipsticks. However, she could not profit much with the business. 

The couple decided to sell herbs used to make shampoo. The business became better and Dung could export products to the US, South Korea and Japan. However, because of Covid-19, the business once again was disrupted in 2020.

After having a baby, she decided to sell children’s clothes, but the products did not sell well. One day, she thought about dried beef, the specialty of her hometown and decided to start again.

Ba Thuc Food was established to sell dried beef products on Facebook and Shopee with a stable number of orders.

The idea of selling dried beef on TikTok came when she read an article about a Chinese man who sold tens of millions of dollars worth of lipsticks after a livestream on the platform. She then accessed TikTok and watched a livestream to sell washing machines.

Dung says that if valuable products such as washing machines can be sold via livestreams, less valuable products like dried beef can sell as well.

At first, she livestreamed several hours a day and attracted only five viewers and no one bought her products. On the 12th day, Dung obtained orders worth VND20 million. On another day, she got 200 orders, or 10 times higher than the number of orders she could sell via Facebook. 

After many livestream sessions, Dung learned from her experience. She tried to persuade clients to buy goods in the most natural way by telling true stories about her homeland, about the cows in the Central Highlands, and the process of creating products.

Encouraged by her initial achievements, she decided to work harder, livestreaming six hours a day. But she then caught a serious disease. After recovering, she had to change her working schedule.

Dung said her livestream session can draw 10,000 viewers and she can sell up to VND800 million worth of products, which is small compared with many other TikTokers. To date, Ba Thuc Food has 400,000 followers on TikTok. 

Dung believes that she is honored by TikTok not because of her high revenue, but because of what she could do for the community.

She said she has been to many localities and realized that every locality has its own specialties, but many are nit known by customers. Dung wants these specialties to become well known not only in Vietnam but all over the globe.

Dung and her husband have begun teaching farmers to livestream to sell products on TikTok.    

Dung recalled her trip to Bat Trang ceramics craft village in Hanoi. Vinh, the owner of the pottery kiln, spoke about the history of thousands of years of Vietnam’s pottery production. She believes that stories are the ‘soul’ of products. Dung advised farmers not simply to sell products but also speak about their feelings.

Tam An