Customers prefer China-made products

Quoc Thong, who has many years of experience in importing and selling interior furniture, said that Vietnamese consumers still purchase China-made products even though they know that the products are sourced from China and are not high-quality and not durable.

“Vietnamese consumers’ habits have changed. Nowadays, they do not want to purchase furniture to use for their whole lives; they prefer fashionable products. Meanwhile, China-made products can meet the new tastes of customers at reasonable prices,” Thong said.

Vo Thi Phuong Mai, an executive from Nha Dep, an interior decoration company, said that the most important factor is reasonable price. “China-made products have good designs which attract customers, while their prices are reasonable,” Mai said.

Minh, a customer, said that he does not care much about where products come from. He just wants products which look beautiful, are suitable for his house and have acceptable prices. Customers like Minh abound.

Which way for Vietnamese enterprises?

“It is really hard to live next to a big arsenal which makes products for the whole world like China,” Thong said. Vietnamese producers say that in order to effectively compete with China-made products, they have no other choice than trying to make high-quality products with diversified designs.

Mai from Nha Dep said that Nha Dep has to lower production costs in order to compete with China-made products. “We have necessary materials and we can make the frames for salons. We have qualified designers and we well understand the tastes of customers which allow us to make products with colours and designs suitable to customers in different areas,” Mai said.

Truong The Phong, Marketing Director of Rossano, said that Rossano also imports China-made products (5 percent of products on sale) so it well understands these products. And the company has realised that it needs to make products with higher quality and durability than China-made products.

“Our advantages are qualified designers from Singapore and Malaysia who always offer new designs. Our customers can place orders and choose colours, materials and sizes they want,” he said.

According to Nguyen Quoc Khanh, Director of AA, Vietnam’s woodwork industry has a big advantage in its skilful labour force that is very good in doing details that need to be done half-manually. The cost of these workers is still 30 percent lower than in China.

Khanh does not think that the small scale of workshops in Vietnam is a disadvantage; on the contrary, he thinks that small scale is an advantage because a shop can receive orders in a flexible way. “They key now is that enterprises need to make investment in diversifying designs and increasing the value of products,” he said.

Khanh said that Vietnamese enterprises need to know their advantages and disadvantages and choose suitable customers. Nha Xinh, for example, targets medium-class and high-class customers. “If you have products with high quality which fit customers’ tastes, you will be able to sell products, even if the prices are a bit higher than imports’ prices,” he said.