E90 – The Impulso Podcast – Closing the gap with China: Vietnam’s ecommerce growth?

In this episode of the Impulso Podcast, we leave the studio behind for Can Gio, a district set to become a major economic hub with a $15 billion investment. Joined by two industry leaders from Metub—Hung Tran, the COO, and Nhi Nguyen, the Director of Strategy and Planning—we dive deep into the rapidly evolving landscape of Vietnam’s digital economy, the growth of e-commerce, live commerce, and the developments shaping Ho Chi Minh City and beyond. 

We discuss the key drivers behind Vietnam’s booming ecommerce sector, including the significant role of live commerce, and how METUB empowers creators to turn their passion into sustainable careers. We also discuss the growing trend of cross-border ecommerce between Vietnam and China, as well as the differences in business culture between Vietnam and China, highlighting why understanding local dynamics is crucial for success.

Check out the full episode here:

Also available on Spotify.

Featured materials:
Metub
Momentum Works Immersion: Ecommerce & Live Commerce
Ecommerce in Southeast Asia 2024, Momentum Works
“Half of Hangzhou is in Ho Chi Minh City”, TheLowDown

[AI-generated transcript]

Sabrina: Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 90 of the Impulso podcast by Momentum Works. So, I’m sure you’ve noticed immediately that something is different about the background, and we also have two special guests with us today. So, we have Hung, as well as Nhi from METUB.

So, maybe you guys can introduce yourselves. 

Hung: Okay, so my name is Hung. I’m currently the COO of METUB. METUB is one of the content creator facilitator in Vietnam. And what I’ve been doing is to turn creator passion into a sustainable career. And I’ve been doing it for five years.

Before that, I was an auditor and then investment advisor.

Nhi: Okay hello everyone. My name is Nhi. I have been selling things online for a living for the past 12 years. I work in e commerce food delivery, a bit of fintech, a bit of e commerce, and I recently chose METUB to endorse their adventures into the social commerce.

And now I’m serving as the director of strategy and planning at METUB. 

Sabrina: So Jianggan, maybe you can share a little bit more about how did we actually meet METUB and why [00:01:00] are we here in Vietnam filming with them? 

Jianggan: Okay. Hi. This is a very nice setting. So basically a few months ago we were in Hangzhou.

Doing our live commerce immersion, and I think Nhi and Hung actually joined us to discuss and visit some of the MCNs supply chain, and as well as the ecosystem players, and I think we met lots of friends, and some of the friends were saying that, hey, we want to visit Vietnam, so now here we are, so actually with us there are a few investors, a few MCNs, a few supply chain experts from China who are there enjoying the sea, but why we’re here?

Nhi: So we are here in Can Gio. I’m the one who answer that, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, where are 

Sabrina: we now? Yeah, where are we now? You guys here, so So, so we are here, we are 

Nhi: here, sitting on the beach of the Can Gio district. It’s in the most far away district in Ho Chi Minh City, but it’s a very special way the special place.

This Can Gio, it’s kind of those islands this set of areas of one third of Ho Chi Minh City, and more. Is the mangrove forest is the UNESCO reserves [00:02:00] atmosphere. So, in the visions of the the Ho Chi Minh cities we have the plans the big plan to build Can Gio into the kind of the new Singapore.

So in the next five years, we will invest about 15 billion US dollars to Can Gio. We built a large bridge. That connect Can Gio to Ho Chi Minh City City, we reduce the travel time about just a half hour or something to Can Gio. We will invest mega cities, modern technology cities, and most of all we invest in the very, you know large capacity deep sea harbor.

Jianggan: Deep sea harbor, yeah, okay. So actually yesterday we hosted the event because since we have so many friends from China and METUB said that, okay, we can sponsor your office, we can sponsor you a hundred chairs. And we had, like, what, 160 people showing up. And it was very interesting discussions because because it truly shows that people are actually very passionate about growing the economy, growing the business.

And, of course, we’ll talk a little bit more about live commerce and retail that we are specializing in. And he said, okay, since we have been in Ho Chi Minh City, So doing lots of [00:03:00] things. Why don’t you see the new city? So you guys see the background, which is where the climbing side right near the sea side.

Yeah, this is the 

Nhi: climbing side. 

Jianggan: Yeah, so so actually behind the camera, it’s the sea. I can see the sea is rising, but I think now we’re still safe, right? 

Sabrina: Yeah. We’re still safe. I was going to say, it will rise through here. 

Hung: Yeah, the tide rising but still safe. 

Sabrina: So, like Jianggan mentioned, we did an event with some Chinese investors yesterday.

So maybe we’ll talk a little bit more about that later. Yeah, but Maybe before that you guys can share with our viewers your career journey and how do you guys see Ho Chi Minh or Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City or Vietnam as a whole has kind of evolved over the past few years. 

Nhi: So I think Tony can share first.

Hung: Career path, I think I’ll share a bit, right? I think a bit more about career path of myself. I’ll talk about what I’m currently doing more. When I enter this kind of, you know, business industry, I actually have nothing in mind about, content creator, but YouTube, about Facebook, or even I think TikTok is nothing by then.

But what [00:04:00] definitely induced me into this industry is because of the activeness and the rising trend of digital media content and the young population and the higher and higher adoption and usage of mobile and data. So it’s a very critical for. Such business like METUB to actually to venture deeper into digital marketing and for now It’s social commerce as you can see By then, I don’t think METUB can become what have been we’ve been doing today and then at that scale, but I think it’s not just a year or two years journey.

It’s a 10 years journey. So for your information, we just separate celebrate our 10 year anniversary. That’s why they wear the same t shirt.

So what we are proud of is that we have been helping thousands of content creators in Vietnam to really turn their passion into a sustainable career. So people often joke that we live by passion, but without money, we cannot continue to do our passion. Right. But. What [00:05:00] we do is currently helping them not just create content by passion, but that passion can also generate money.

So from the past, they just can get money from advertising. And later on not just advertising on platform, also advertising from brands directly. But for now, there are more avenue of revenue stream, which recently we adopt the social commerce. You know what, like for social commerce, people really enjoying Buying things while enjoying video content.

So that’s where content creator who can create interesting content that also have value of product in kind of illustration and, product features you know, example illustration, then that’s really interesting to people. Especially, I think, young people like you, right?

You always choose to buy things on the internet. I don’t know how many times, but for people, younger people in Vietnam, I don’t think they’re gonna just go around the street and then buy something except for the time when they go to a shopping mall. So that’s the dynamic. [00:06:00] I think not only happening in Vietnam, but also in the region.

So I think we are in the right way and we want to continue to expand our scale and also continue to have our content creators to do that. And talking about social commerce talking about Vietnam. So we cannot forget about Ho Chi Minh City right? Ho Chi Minh City is actually the economic center of Vietnam, not just the Southern region.

It contribute the highest GDP in terms of percentage so the highest in terms of population I think it also has the kind of most diverse and dynamic, demography, continually push the economic further. So I think that is important for the active city like Ho Chi Minh City to continue to grow.

Recently we have not reached the full potential of us because the overall contribution of GDP of Ho Chi Minh into the total Vietnamese GDP is reduced. But I think the Ho Chi Minh City government, [00:07:00] local government is trying to investing more in infrastructure.

It is requesting more kind of freedom to build their own agenda. So I think the government, the national government is also paving some way for such kind of special treatment. And as you said, we’re going to finish the bridge that can reduce the time between the city center with conserve to just around 30 minutes.

So it’s one of the few infrastructure that project that we have right now. And I think infrastructure development is going to be the key thing for Ho Chi Minh to go back to its historical growing trend. And I’m looking forward to that. And yeah, I think infrastructure is, it’s one of the most important factor in my mind.

Jianggan: I think just a few days ago Mr. To Lam, the new party secretary, actually I think made some speech to the government’s in the south or in Ho Chi Minh City saying that, hey, you guys should like take the liberty and build economy, right? Give some reassurance, right?

The focus is economic development. 

Hung: [00:08:00] Yes, yes. I have strong kind of belief in the government and the party that they are, that they Really, really trying to find a way for Ho Chi Minh, to realize its full potential because we have been growing so fast and the city is so, so young and so energetic and yeah why don’t we find some way like you should remember that Thu Duc city is the first ever municipal city in Vietnam.

So it’s the strong example of Ho Chi Minh city can have some special treatment so that it can grow further. 

Sabrina: Interesting. So you’ve talked you’ve given us a very good background on the growing economy behind Ho Chi Minh City, not just Ho Chi Minh City, but Vietnam as a whole.

And of course, we see that the government is also trying to do something to help the country’s economy grow further. And I think people from China also have a similar sense towards Vietnam, right? So to give a little bit of context, we recently, we held an event yesterday with METUB and one of our other partners from our May Immersion in Capital.

So it was a joint event between some Chinese players some Chinese [00:09:00] brands, Chinese e commerce enablers who came down to Vietnam to do a sharing as well. So I think we see that a lot of Chinese companies are interested in Vietnam. Do you guys get the sense here as well? Yeah, 

Nhi: yeah, yeah. I think so. I think so.

 But let I follow Tony’s on his talk. I think this is a very good example of the whole Vietnam country economic progress. So this can, yeah, this is kind of untapped. But very potential should approach for Ho Chi Minh City. So we have the area is one third of Ho Chi Minh City and it’s almost similar to the total area of Singapore.

And 95 percent of this area is the forest. So we have the blank papers. We can write anything we want on that. It’s an untapped source. And it’s a very unique combination. We have the export field, we have the eco tourism, we can build the very, world class infrastructure for international logistics.

We plan to build Harbour that have the capacity, I think it’s double, triple the Harbour in Singapore. It’s all of that. It’s so that we [00:10:00] look at the past when we read on the, you know, the report or the projects and say, Hey, Vietnam grow in this number, that number. And then at the end of year, we assess that number so many times.

So even in the year 20 2022, I believe that our GDP grow for 8 percent something. And we keep that rate for, I believe for the next five, 10 years, we can do that. We have very good ratings middle class. We still have the golden population for at least 10 years, and you see that the Vietnamese people is very active, very hunger, eager to do something new.

 So I think you see the great shows approach for our country in the next 10 years.

Sabrina: How about you, Jianggan? What do you think? So, obviously they’ve given us the Vietnamese point of view. They think there’s a lot of potential, right? But, Jianggan, you meet with a lot of these Chinese investors. I mean, not just Chinese investors, but investors in general.

What do you think is their sense on the potential or risk of business in Vietnam? Or the development of Vietnam? 

Jianggan: I want to draw back a little bit in history. I mean, the first time I came to Vietnam was 2006. About, almost 20 years ago. So, I did a bit of backpacking. [00:11:00] Studied in Hanoi. Okay. And I didn’t come to Ho Chi Minh City back then, so from Hanoi, I went all the way down to Hoi An.

Then from Hoi An, I went up north to the south part of the Chinese border. So did, and of course, Ha Long Bay as well, as a tourist. I remember I spent like two days in Da Nang. So using Da Nang as a base to explore the nearby, it’s a city in the central part of Vietnam. And in 2019, I went back to Da Nang.

It looked very, very different from what I saw previously. Like more than 10 years ago, it was modern. It was lots of lots of developments, lots of lots of hotels and the infrastructure. Infrastructure was good. I mean, this is this change is You don’t see that in many countries, but I mean coming from China myself, this feels very familiar to me, right?

So you have something and a few years ago I mean the infrastructure becomes very different and a few years later things become even more developed You So when you, when you go to Hanoi, it’s on the outskirts, and these new cities being built, and they actually get built. [00:12:00] So, and coming down to Ho Chi Minh City, so you just feel that it’s, it’s very, very dynamic, right?

So people are hardworking, people are hungry, and I think you guys went with us to China, and you probably were amongst the ones who asked the most questions. And this few days, we’re with a few friends from China, from various parts of the ecosystem.

 And obviously their sense is that a lot of things that we see here is already very similar to what we see in China. I mean, the quality of the live streaming that you guys are putting up. So in terms of lighting, in terms of the script, in terms of performance of the KOLs, in terms of the assortment of goods, it’s already very similar to what they have in China.

And people go to the port and they will see that, okay, wow, like, like trucks moving containers. People are working, you know, working really hard. And it’s similar to what we have experienced back in China a few years ago. And obviously it’s a different country. And obviously, I think things followed in a way, there are similarities in the trajectory, right?

Because China opened up in, like, 1978. But the real impact was from, from the central government was 1992. I think the reform and open up [00:13:00] in Vietnam happened around similar time and China joined the WTO early 2000s and Vietnam joined a few years later. So you see, I mean a lot of similarities and there are also lots of differences.

I mean, China is a lot much larger market. So FDI came and local competition very, very quickly came up. Vietnam, I think there’s still lots of FDI coming in. I mean, China is like platooning a little bit because of the cost and also because of local competition. Yeah. But in Vietnam, we also see like quite a bit of local competition, but there’s slight nuances which are different from what we see in China.

Sabrina: Momentum was launched our e commerce 2023 report. I will link it down in the show notes if you guys are interested, but in the report, we realized that Vietnam’s e commerce market is actually the fastest developing in Southeast Asia, right?

And of course, What does this mean for investors and companies and I think for some Chinese suppliers as well, right? Because this is probably where some of the goods come from

Nhi: Okay, okay Yeah So he has been selling things for like, what, 12 years? Yeah, I’m selling things online for a living So [00:14:00] I really observe the development of the Economic industry the e commerce industry in Vietnam for the past, like, at least 10 years.

 I know what happening. Mm. So, things change gradually, but very steadily. Firstly, we just sell a few things online. It’s a book for accessorize and patients. Mm. Right now, people can sell medicines online. And we keep breaking the, unlocking the new categories. Back then just a few young people’s like Tony, like I was purchasing online.

But right now, when I come back to my hometown, my 60 years old mother, she’s buying things online on online stream platform because it’s so easy. It’s so convenient. And back then it cost me five days to wait for my parcel to drop at my door. It’s right now I can get it within 30 minutes. If I think Ho Chi Minh city and one day if I live out there in another province.

 The penetrations, the customer segment, the category that is accessible and the level of service is on grow up really, really fast and steadily. [00:15:00] 

Hung: Yeah. I think talking about the grow of e-commerce, I also would like to emphasize on the contribution of data and mobile, right? You know, that Vietnam is also have a high, really, really high adoption rate of mobile and not only mobile adoption rate, but the data is also cheap, like 5G here, I think.

Just 3, 3, 4 something for a month. You can swipe your phone like unlimitedly. I think I bought the wrong sim card for my trip. It’s also kind of a very, very good thing that help us like people like us to use my mobile phone and we really adopt our phone frequently.

 That’s why I think like. People like your mother and even younger generation. I think he also forgot about the really rising population of young people. Not just Gen Z, but Gen Alpha too. Gen Alpha too, okay. I think for them, they even like more kind of online e commerce platform avid than us.

Like we even sometimes we go and we buy some stuff at web [00:16:00] market. But I don’t think my daughter, she gonna know like what my, what market is, but that’s something I think we have to pay attention to. Like I don’t say that GTMP, a traditional channel would disappear, but they’re going to be a lot of room for growth for the new channel.

 That’s what I think people who are working in commerce area, they should also pay attention to. 

Nhi: I and Tony, she’s both we have have young daughters, about three, four years old. They are buying things online? Yeah. Three, four years old? No, no, no, not that much, but the story is she asked for something.

 We tried to buy it at the local store, at the ground floor or the convenience store nearby, but it sold out. And she says, why don’t you purchase it on Shopee? She knows Shopee Express, right? She’s only four years old. Yeah, four years old. She knows. Why don’t you buy Shopee from me? Then they bond, they bond online, they bond e commerce.

Sabrina: It’s a very different demographic, right? They are born into this. They are so used to it. Yeah, they 

Nhi: know that’s the solution. 

Sabrina: So you’ve talked a bit about the growth of e commerce, but how about the e commerce ecosystem in Vietnam in general? How have you [00:17:00] seen the growth of that over the past few years?

 Like enablers SaaS providers, logistic providers. You guys are part of the ecosystem, right? 

Hung: Yeah. So I think, talking about the e commerce ecosystem, we have so many players, right? Previously we just think about the sellers and then the buyers. Buyer is also an important part, right?

 When the e commerce platform is growing, you have more, not just seller cannot do something themselves. So they have to ask for help from enablers. And When, like, I remember that yesterday when Jianggan talk about enablers and one of the participants, they come to me and they ask what is actually is enabler, what he’s actually doing.

Logistic and fulfillment, and even the word sometimes is not familiar with some of the player. It means that out there, there are a lot of, players in playing in the enabler fields, but they don’t understand. But I think for a long, long time they’ve been doing it. They’re doing it even for, traditional retail and offline channel.

Now they turn offline and then they become the strong [00:18:00] force of pushing the e commerce forward. I definitely think that there are a lot of Players out there, they’re playing the mid, like the middle end role. Like they enable, the sales of products online.

So all of them can call enablers. And we ourself, like METUB, we also play the role of enabler. For example, like we do marketing for products of the brand. We try to do full funnel, like turn, attention viewership bus into audience too. So we have content creators to connect with brands and connect them together, sees a good deal for them and then sell products online.

 One of the example for grow is that I can give you like for us. Traditionally, we actually a media and entertainment company. So we don’t think that we can participate in commerce area. 

Hung: Like I think back then in 2021, like people really ask when we try to sell products like rice and durian.

They ask like, why such company like you, like you just try to optimize [00:19:00] YouTube video. And then about marketing and running ads. Why do you try to sell products? You know nothing about logistic, nothing about warehousing. Why do you try to come into that? But we think at that time shopper tenement is a trend.

It already happened in China and it, I think it definitely happened in South Asia as a whole and Vietnam specifically. And with that strong perception and strong belief in mind, we venture into commerce, e commerce first, and we collaborate with some e commerce platform. But it turns out that It’s not something we’re strong, right?

 We are not strong in terms of selling product, but what we are strong is, putting the good content and trying to introduce product through that content. So that’s, I think it’s the time we explore that social commerce and live streaming as specifically is very good. Bridge connection between commerce and content and marketing.

 We are one of the only player who push for live streaming commerce in Vietnam. And luckily we, after two years, we are now [00:20:00] one of the biggest MCN, who enable creators to partner with a seller, partner with a platform to sell products. And now I think we are a really proper enabler.

We can call ourselves that, probably. Not just a kind of, a newbie in this industry anymore. So I think for such a player like us, we can become an e commerce enabler. I think everyone can do e commerce. So just what you can choose and what is the right role to push for is something you have to think about.

And. I think with, 53% specifically, I’m strong, I read the momentum. I remember exactly the number and the growth rate and it’s the highest in South Asia. I think we continue to see, higher, maybe not higher, but it’s that kind of strong growth. E commerce Vietnam can be a bigger portion of the general commerce.

Yeah. So I think the trend will be like. More and more people would join fast. 

Jianggan: So it’s kind of interesting. Over the past, I think two and a [00:21:00] half years, I’ve been actually taking breaks in different parts of Vietnam because the culture is always fascinating and the second is that the infrastructure is actually quite good.

Good hotels, good food, and good connection. Because of that, Oh, there’s an ant. We’re just talking about good infrastructure. And natural as well. Yeah. Yeah. We’re in nature. I’ve been to places like the Lougai province far north around the Sapa and also a few nearby towns.

And I drove from Hanoi to Yen De in the mountains next to HaipHung. So it’s interesting. We went through a few provinces. Sometimes you see like industrial parks being formed. You see lots of factories, Chinese factories, Taiwanese factories. The Korean factories, but one thing I do realize is that even like some very very small villages I mean you pass by along the road.

You will always see delivery riders like JNT, SPX, Shopee Express, you’ll see GTN Because all the colors are like bright like yellow Orange or red you will see them. It’s like even in some of the remote places. So I was saying that wow, okay You This is something that [00:22:00] I didn’t see like before the pandemic when I was going around, right?

 You do see that the things are, the penetration is actually growing pretty impressively. I mean, this is not backed by any data. I mean, data you have the 53 percent where we approximated from lots of data sources, I mean, including logistic providers. But we do see this dynamics when we actually go around the country, right?

You see all this dynamics happening. 

Nhi: If we’re talking about that, we do believe that even that we have very strong role in the past years, but we still have a very potential role in the future. Because as I showed you yesterday, that all penetrations of e commerce in total retail is still very small.

A seven, a maximum eight percent. Compared to 37 percent in China, so we have a long way to grow. Yeah, I believe so. And, talking about J& Ts and, the last mile deliveries. Yeah. This is, they are the segment of, the ecosystem cap enablers that help the e commerce grow in Vietnam in general.

Sabrina: Mm. 

Nhi: But we’re talking about that when we compare the ecosystem structure of what we observe in China, thanks to [00:23:00] your immersion program and another trip that we come to China. We believe that. Vietnam and China have the very similar structure but ecosystem. So what we have in China, we have the same thing in Vietnam.

It is a sort of traffic, you have WeChat, a sort of traffic here, we have Meta, we have Google, and we have all kind of seller. That’s, individual seller, local, brand seller. Omnicell or retail retailers own op and neighbor cross border. You have your one, you have bu in China we have gone Kop C in Vietnam.

The difference is in Vietnam, we are much younger and we much, long way to be like matures and with the scale of what you have in China. Yeah, 

Sabrina: I think that’s why so many Chinese investors and brands are interested in coming to Vietnam, right? Because they see the similarities It’s something they are a little more familiar with as well.

But of course, I’m sure there are differences as well Jianggan, what do you think are some of the biggest differences that Chinese companies face when they come to Vietnam? 

Jianggan: I Think first and foremost is that it’s a different market, right? Even though there are some similarities in [00:24:00] trajectory of development and the infrastructure is still different You the ecosystem players are different, right?

I mean, in China, you don’t have Google, you don’t have Facebook. In Vietnam, you have that. You have this competition between the international players and local players. So, and also the developers, I mean, Vietnam has a large developer ecosystem. But developers attention is split, right? Because, I mean, I know lots of people are making lots of money developing games on Google and a lot of people who are making money doing Web3.

 In China, lots of actually developers are building different parts of e commerce service ecosystem, the software as a service on ERP, CRM. We do not see that as much in Vietnam yet. I mean, yesterday we visited Amazon, right? Amazon Global Service. Yeah. Yeah. So they were saying that, okay so the sellers from Vietnam the number of sellers and the volume, I mean, going to the U S from Vietnam has surpassed all the rest of Southeast Asia combined.

Jianggan: But in terms of service ecosystem, I mean, look at China, right? Every center is serviced by, I don’t know, so many software developers, you know, ERP and stuff in Vietnam. We [00:25:00] still don’t see that. I think there are still gaps to be filled, but what we didn’t mention yesterday is that because in China, there are so many service providers, Everyone doesn’t have a margin, right?

So it’s so competitive everywhere, but I think in Vietnam, so People can still afford to have a weekend off. So we’ll have, I mean, today’s Saturday. We have a few partners coming with us. And while we’re filming this on the beach, they’re on the other side of the beach, actually working, selecting, selecting products and stuff on a Saturday.

Because they said for their live stream, it’s every day. I mean, you remember one of the studios we visited? Yeah, we know. So the KOL does 364 days out of 365. 

Nhi: Yeah. 

Jianggan: And we’re asking them, on which day do we actually get rest? Is it Chinese New Year? They said, no. I mean, One day where I’m really, really tired, so take one day off.

Sabrina: It’s not even her own birthday. It’s just one random day when she’s very, very tired. Yeah, just 

Jianggan: random day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some rest, right? 

Sabrina: So we spoke a bit about e commerce. Maybe we can dive a little deeper into live commerce, since that’s the scene that you guys are in, right? How do you see the growth of live commerce, or [00:26:00] what’s the current penetration rate of live commerce in Vietnam now? 

Nhi: For the penetration of Live Commerce in Vietnam right now, I think we are catching really fast compared to the China market. Right now, we believe that the penetration of Live Commerce in total retail economy in Vietnam is almost 20 percent already. And really, really catching up. So with the, shoppy light, they are strong interest of entering and invested in that area.

I believe this will soon grow up to 20, 25%.

Sabrina: That’s a very high. 

Hung: Yeah, 

Nhi: really high. 

Hung: And something I would like to add is that I think among the 53 percent of growth last year for e commerce, I think live commerce contributes significantly. So you can see in one of the report I read maybe from Google and Bain yeah, and some of the partner, they estimate that the growth for e commerce in Vietnam for last year, maybe just 30%.

But one of the thing they might have missed is that I think at that time they don’t think of live commerce. I think what surprised us the most is live commerce. And we all [00:27:00] know that life commerce is growing in Vietnam. One of the reasons and partially is because of TikTok shop coming here.

 It’s have a very strong, I think a backbone not only in terms of system, but also in terms of partner. For live streaming commerce to grow like the back end is really really, cutted to the creator demands to connect with brands and I think yeah as you said Shopee and maybe other platform and even we have upcoming platform too They definitely would need to , look to live commerce as a part of their e commerce growth strategy 

Sabrina: In addition to live commerce, what do you think are some other trends that you are seeing in the e commerce or retail space in Vietnam in general

besides just growth of live commerce, what are some other trends that are appearing? 

Jianggan: Maybe I can make a comment about the supply chain part first. Even in the U. S. and stuff, lots of goods are supplied from China, and lots of factories will supply their components from China.

 One thing we find interesting is I have a good friend I think university friend, called a [00:28:00] So I’m Zoom or Sun Yung, as you will say in the South, and who is having a small firm designing electronic chips for some clients based out of Hanoi. And I actually want to ask him a question.

 Why are you based yourself in Hanoi, not in Ho Chi Minh City? Because I mean, this is the place where you see all the economic activities happening, right? And he gave me a very interesting reason. And first, obviously, Hanoi has lots of universities. For the students he can hire and secondly, he said because when I design a chip, I need someone to do the prototype and manufacture for me.

So I don’t necessarily always find the components in Vietnam. But if I’m in Hanoi, I can very quickly call someone in Guangzhou and they can send something on a bus, on a truck and he arrives almost the same day, like 12 hours. So, that’s advantage that you have. And When it comes to live commerce per se, right?

 You have two parts in a live commerce. I mean, firstly, obviously the branded goods, right? And the second is that goods which are trendy, unique and lots of sort of brands or suppliers, they can actually get the [00:29:00] components, get ingredients from some of the factories in Guangzhou or surrounding areas actually very quickly.

So we don’t run a very large inventory risk. Because we’ve been looking at some of the countries where you need to source for certain components, which are only manufactured in China, and you need to take two months. We run live commerce and you spot a trend and you don’t act upon it very quickly.

 Then the trend is gone. You have to sell something else. I think that kind of like a supply chain proximity actually is it’s quite beneficial for Vietnam, especially in the north, northern part.

Hung: Yeah, I think you’re right in terms of supply chain because yeah, like to answer Sabrina’s question. I think one of the trend we see clearly is increasing popularity of cross border e commerce because I think for production itself, right? Like each of the country has their own strength.

Maybe like in Vietnam, we are strong in terms of agriculture product. And I think we actually sold a lot and export a lot of, agriculture product to China and from China to Vietnam because China has a very big scale production. 

So a lot of like you said, like cheap and, [00:30:00] industrial products, not just industrial product, but also everyday, consumer product.

 We see a lot, like I just read the news, like we actually have already, a couple of millions parcel coming from China to Vietnam every day, but we still see strong growth. Because I think of the ease of supply chain and increasing connection between country like a lot of, logistic and fulfillment partners, they build the warehouse, along the borders so that the time to the consumer can be shortened and like products and easily reach buyers like within a day or a few days.

 That would be one of the key factor that help e commerce to grow in Vietnam for now. 

Jianggan: Last year, last October I was in Sapa. Actually I spent more than a week there, and some of you remember I was absent from office for more than a week. 

Sabrina: You were still sending me slack messages, so.

Jianggan: Yeah, so I was working out of a balcony on a hotel where I can see Phan Tze Phan, the highest mountain. I can see the flag there. And one day I said, okay, this place is like 40 minutes away from the [00:31:00] Chinese border. Let me just go there. So we took a taxi and 40 minutes, we’re at the border in Laogai.

And Laogai, we crossed the border, you actually literally walk over, two minutes and it’s Hekou, right? So once you cross over into Hekou and a couple of things, which I find a very, very interesting is first along the immigration, if I could, we cross to the other side, you have all the businesses which are helping companies in Vietnam source for products, source for components.

And everyone’s saying that, Hey, we buy from 1688, which is the B2B platform of Alibaba. And customers from Vietnam will come in and take the goods and then go to Vietnam and assemble or distribute. And the second thing, which I find very interesting is that there are lots of agriculture and home products from Vietnam being sort of moved there.

 And one thing that’s very interesting is that they hire lots of Vietnamese live hosts who speak Chinese to convince the Chinese customer, Hey, this is genuinely from Vietnam. This fruits and stuff are genuinely from Vietnam. It’s really [00:32:00] buzzling, the border. And we crossed the immigration into China.

So there were like eight lanes at the immigration. And I was queuing in the lane and at the end they said, Oh, no, no, no, we can’t scan the passport. Because amongst the eight lanes, Seven lanes only available to scan that the special travel permit for people living on the border. Only the last lane is for people who hold passports.

And they said, well, so yeah, every day we have like thousands of people coming in and out. The business is booming, trade is booming. I think it’s something quite interesting and which we could observe. Yeah.

Nhi: Talking about trends, I want to and, another views from the consumer side.

So recently become of the severe competition on the supply side. So the customer have much more options, right? We have so many options. We have, usually we have international brands. Now we have some brands, our own brands from China. So we have some emerging local brands in Vietnam. And thanks to the video platform where people demonstrate products, talk much more about the function and also the ingredient of products.

What, what happened? The concepts [00:33:00] and the knowledge of the customer about the product increasing. So now I see that the lady talking about the ingredients of the skincare products is just like a doctor So even though that when the authenticity of our customer is not so high compared to other market But I do see everything so people care about the quality and really looking for the value for money product Right now.

Sabrina: So the consumers are very well educated, right? They’re great knowledge about, they’re training, 

Nhi: they’re training thanks to the vid platform. 

Jianggan: Which is interesting because that in a way will also push the local brands and the local service providers to deliver, do a better job. I think Hung, you mentioned yesterday during the panel that I think we asked what the trends you see in Vietnam especially in e-commerce sector coming to 2025.

And what you were saying is that the first, obviously, I mean, competition is going to be fierce, for a couple of reasons. I mean, platforms are raising the commission rate, which, I mean, of course, it doesn’t feel nice if you are a seller, but at the end of the day, you know that for the platform to be sustainable, they probably need to make money somewhere.

 And [00:34:00] also the players, I mean, also the service level, from five days to one day, et cetera, that really forces the players to be more efficient. And I think last night I went to a networking session organized by one of the top VCs in the region. So we met like, I don’t know, 40, 50 Vietnamese entrepreneurs.

And many of them actually, I mean, compared to entrepreneurs, I see many places, many of them know very well what’s going on in China. I mean, they’re already doing this. I mean, so, so that’s why you have the Chinese colleagues coming here saying that, Hey, feels a bit different, but it feels very similar because you are doing the things that we are doing.

But maybe because China is extra competitive, you have, for instance, like Saturday afternoon you’re still working and here it’s a slightly better life, work life balance, but in terms of the fundamentals, it’s actually quite similar.

Sabrina: What are the consumers in Vietnam like? Like currently and maybe how are they different from maybe five years ago? Like you said right now they are very knowledgeable. A lot of the young people prefer shopping online Wow, some other consumer trends that you guys [00:35:00] see. 

Jianggan: Can I say something? 11 years ago when I was working for Rocket Internet, we’re doing the taxis We’re doing ride hailing competing against the Grab.

So two things we realized about Vietnamese consumers First thing is that they really like iPhones but overall, we see the iPhone penetration in Vietnam is probably similar to what you see in other countries. But in the cities, you really see a lot of people with iPhones because back then we developed the app for the drivers.

We said, okay, across the world, drivers actually care about their spending, so they don’t, they only have Android. But come to Vietnam, we counted, I think the first batch of 500 drivers were hired in Ho 55 percent of them use iPhones. This is something which surprised, surprised us the first. And the second is that the consumers were very calculative.

The early days of Lazada, we look at their promotion trajectory. I mean, we look at our projection, we look at the food delivery trajectory back in 2013 to 2015 is you give a promotion, boom, demand goes through the roof. You stop promotion, boom. Drop to the drop to the ground, but I think over the years things are [00:36:00] probably become a little bit more nuanced or sophisticated So what do you guys observe now?

Hung: So I think yeah, you’re right like people yeah, I think not just consumer in Vietnam like people everyone like good deals, right? Yeah, I think especially when you’re a tough time True. So everyone I’m hungry for good deals, but I think We can see that young people young people. Yeah They are also hungry for good products or very special product.

Like, I don’t know whether it’s popular in your country, but in Vietnam, I think, and also in Thailand Labooboo is now kind of a trend. I can see that a lot of my colleagues, they wear a Labubu like the lovely monster that, you know I think Lisa just wear in a key chain.

Yes. The key chain, Labubu. Lisa is that famous I think by Pop Mak, because of Blackpink. And you know what? One of my colleagues kind of buy Labubu every live stream. So every day she’s going to have a new, blind box. Okay. Mystery box. [00:37:00] And he, she lies, exploring what is inside. So I think for now, she may have up to a few thousand of US dollar, kind of set up Labubu.

Wow. And I think every Labubu SKU costs around 15, 20 something, but I feel surprised. And I just, into Kind of a very surprised, finding that, okay. So people, although they might be hungry for deals for voucher like you, but sometime you can actually attract people to, emotion.

So if you can really persuade people that that’s something you need to have, then they may not look at the price. They, I think Labubu buyers for now, they don’t look at the deal. They just look at, when you. Really have that special box. Like I think in the collection there is one special box and then when it happen, it always around.

 I think girls like you, you understand? Right. I don’t buy, you have a good, your colleagues will, so I, I can say boxes. Yeah. Maybe for [00:38:00] such case, it’s not just about their product, it’s also about promotion. Like you like the kl, like you like Lisa and Black Pink, then you buy. But I think also one of the example of, the case that if you.

Hung: If you really like something and it’s so unique, more often than not, you will not look at the deal, but you look at how special it is. I think a lot of sellers, they can also they should not, dive into the red sea, right? They should look for a red kind of, blue ocean that, they can really win through product, not just through deal.

Jianggan: Absolutely. So two weeks ago I was in Indonesia. I talked to one of the largest importers of stationaries pens. Stationary. Yeah. Pens. To be specific. He said there are two ways of selling pens in Indonesia, and he believes the same El else everywhere. Is that first is very standardized pens.

I mean No, no design and stuff. You sell it at the cheapest price. Everyone competes on price. Yeah. Second, is that the pins with a design bear or design panda attached to the top? Yes. It’s two times the price, but people look at it, people say, okay, I mean, I’m going to use the pen for like, I don’t know, half a year.

So why don’t [00:39:00] I spend more and buy something I really like? And for that, there are really lots of differentiated products coming in. I think that’s, this is also where life becomes interesting, right? Because this kind of like new, novel, like unique products can actually appeal to audiences.

Hmm. 

Nhi: Back to the time when I worked in the retail, the applied retail supermarket. 

Jianggan: Yeah. 

Nhi: You 

Jianggan: a cashier? 

Nhi: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of. I put the car along the aisles and put stuff on the shelves. Yeah. So actually, the very simple thing. They say 80 percent of the sales of the supplicant come from very boring products.

Sabrina: Yeah. 

Nhi: Tissue, milk, beer, cooking oil. And beer is a very boring product. On that boring categories, people compete on the price. Yeah. Same online. People compete very, very severely. So for the very functional products online, but for the emotional product, like you say toys So you don’t have to compete on on the price So this is two different strategy for four things and then let me recall the the report from acentra and [00:40:00] tiktok I think so and they point out that there’s a base of customer in several Apec country and vietnam on top of two categories first is the customer be affected by the influencer opinion on the top, and Japan’s on the other side.

 And the second figure is the people value the advice, value the comment from the community. Again, Vietnam on the top. So that two characteristics, I think this is one of the key driver for the live stream commerce in Vietnam.

Sabrina: Yeah, I think interesting that you guys talk about blind boxes cause so we did a report in collaboration with Lark transforming the frontline industries where we actually did a case study on pop mud who sells blind boxes as well.

Right. And, but what’s interesting about blind boxes is that these are products that do well offline because I know like our colleagues who like to buy blind boxes, they will go to the shops and they will pick up and they will try to wait. To see if they can get the characters that they want.

But you [00:41:00] guys do it on live commerce, right? So how do people see what they’re buying?

Hung: It’s just a joy of, you know, just opening a gift, right? And then without knowing what specifically it is.

Nhi: When I come to Changchun, they I see that they set up their retail network really good. They’re everywhere. Some mall store, some big store, concept store, even some vending machine. So I think when they enter the market in Vietnam, they start with the Lycomat first. This is a market entry channel.

I think it’s smart, but I think sooner or later they will go to upline retail. 

Jianggan: Actually it’s true. I mean, in China nowadays as well, live commerce is a way for you to start building a brand. And once you have tested a brand to say that, okay, consumers actually. Like my products you move to the traditional e commerce channels because there you have more Reliable and sort of more consistent traffic you move to offline where you have the channels people I [00:42:00] mean, where’s the more stable in a way?

 I think combination of a different channels is what people call a omni channel, right? 

Sabrina: Yeah, 

Jianggan: and use the strength of different channels and stuff. Actually one more question I have for you guys We spoke with quite a number of Chinese businesses, either working with Venice Meats Partners, either like, distributing goods, or either setting up factories here.

 And many of them say that, okay, it feels that there’s similarities in terms of culture, but they feel that there’s a difference. And many of them can’t really quite pinpoint what the difference is. There’s one big Chinese e commerce company, I will not mention which one, but they did a study.

Actually, I mean, the head of organizational development actually did a study to see that why the managers they send from China are not effective. And the conclusion is that they said that the working culture in Vietnam is much less top down compared to China. At the top level of management is much more consensus driven compared to China.

Is that what you guys see as well, or? 

Hung: You mean like more bottom up, like balance between bottom up and top down, right? Yeah, it’s, it’s Not like centralised from top to 

Jianggan: You need to build [00:43:00] consensus more amongst the management, at least. So in China, it tends to be top down. 

Hung: Yeah. Nhi, what do you think? So 

Nhi: actually I worked for several corporates during my career.

I, I worked for Winroot. Then I worked for Group in Myanmar. 

Jianggan: So WIN Group is the, the largest conglomerate in the country, right? 

Nhi: Yeah. So group I worked for in Myanmar is I think the top three, top four Myanmar as well. Okay. Then I worked for completely different book and is, I work for the takeaway just eat take away re in Europe.

Then I come back, I work for Korean people. I experienced so many kind of culture, but yes, I say that. In the Vietnamese companies, I think the level of democracy is quite high. To be true, to be true. It’s quite high. And, I think it’s a different kind as well. So when I work for a corporate, they’re very top down.

And then we don’t have to spend much time to think. We just do that. We don’t have the luxury to debate. The Korean companies, or? Yeah, it’s the same as the Vietnamese corporate. Yeah, so, so we’re happy. Objective. Yeah. The [00:44:00] directions. Yeah. So my job is trying to do the best, most efficient.

 When we come to Vietnam, especially Vietnam stuff. So, because we don’t know exactly what to do and maybe just the founders or the CEO, just the same age as we are kind of working friends. So we have more debate. We have more than more races and in our industry, in our industry to meet up when we value activities.

I think this is. More pro than con.

Sabrina: So you would prefer the meet up style of 

Nhi: Yeah, the fact is, like, I think that 80, 85 percent of our company is below 30 years old. Because we’re really young, we encourage creativity. We love people to raise up, bring idea, 

Sabrina: yeah. Yeah. 

Hung: So I think for me, I will not have to say whether it’s real or not.

I think it’s definitely true. But I want to discuss more about the reason behind maybe think there are reasons that might contribute to that. The fact that people and business in Vietnam are more collective, like it’s not really, top down centralized. One of the reason [00:45:00] I think my potentially be , I do not have any research in hand, but my personal opinion is because of the competition.

Maybe, like, In Vietnam, it’s not yet at the scale or at the, the stage of, Chinese economy because you have so many people, so many players and the competition is too fierce, like you work 996, right? And then everyone is just, trying to make things faster and faster. Here in Vietnam, definitely, I think startup is really, really faster than other, traditional old business.

But I think we don’t really have that kind of strong fierce kind of competition so far. So I think it’s one of the reason why people still have time, room for discussion, debate, and then to decide which way is the best for such a company to grow at a certain period of time.

But with that in mind, I don’t say that we should be always, more collective. I think Definitely sometime like for me too, for example, in some case if, we are shortage of time or we know that [00:46:00] definitely the founder know that’s the way that we should go, then everyone must have to do that.

Then we just, decided to go for that. No one can go against that. I think it also depends on the stage of the business too. That’s my two cents. 

Jianggan: I think you brought up a very interesting point, right? So we look at certain things certain phenomena, try to understand what’s behind it, what are the factors which lead people to behave in a certain way or lead the organization to behave in a certain way, and then decide whether this way is the best for the organization rather than So this advice I gave to every Chinese businessman who was asking me about this question, right?

I said Well, I mean, if you’re looking for a formula, then you’ll probably not get it. What you should really do is that, I mean, go on the ground, observe, and I think if you can succeed as a businessman in China, you have been through some competition, and you are smart enough, and just observe, just be humble, just find out why things behave in a certain way, why people behave in a certain way, then you’ll know how to best navigate.

Navigate this so I think for [00:47:00] people who really want to develop the market or who want to leverage the manufacturing the resources The infrastructure in this country what they should really do is It’s just to come down work with the people sort of discuss one more with the people learn and observe and then you will figure out I mean how to navigate yourself There’s no formula 

Sabrina: Maybe one last question to wrap up this podcast So like John can say right it’s good advice for those who want to come to vietnam to come down and see for themselves You What are some advice you would give for Chinese companies or brands or not just Chinese companies, but brands or Anyone who wants to come to Vietnam and start a business Or to do business 

Nhi: So if just give one one piece of advice, I think we have the fast growing economy and ecommerce and retail And people in Vietnam generally is open for new brands.

It’s an opportunity, right? They’re open for new brands. But they do have their unit preferences, their unit demand, and unit costs. So I think the best thing the brands would like to enter Vietnam is [00:48:00] find a good local partner. So to have them enter the market and grow their brands sustainably.

Hung: Yeah, so I think to add more into Nhi’s, what Nhi said, like, I think, yeah, it really resonates what, Jianggan say, like, local factor is very important, right? You might be successful in China, in the U. S., or in other South Asia country, but when you come to other market, even in the same region, it might totally be different, right?

 Vietnam is just the same. I think it’s not a kind of, a difference. We should be on the ground, like we should be realistic with what we want. So like people said, we aim for high, achievement, but we always start small. So even I think for big players, they should always, start small and really do a careful research and be on the ground.

 And with that in mind, they can grow more sustainably and also have a really strong foothold in the country. Not just, put kind of, you have a lot of financial resources, you have a strong team in the, [00:49:00] your headquarter, it doesn’t guarantee your success in country like Vietnam.

Especially, I think, when it comes to, the cultural difference and like Nhi said, with cultural difference, you can definitely reach out to. A local partner to navigate that kind of, dynamic. And one more thing is that, opportunity come with threats. As you say in your research, like high growth and higher, average income or revenue per, seller, but number of sellers is in the downward trend.

So it means that not everyone is enjoying that benefit, that growth. You should be taking time to do research and then be careful and really, really on the ground. 

Jianggan: Yeah. So Sabrina, before we wrap up, I just want to describe where we are and I didn’t see those clearly, but now I can see them.

 Basically we’re on a beach. Grass next to the beach. And there’s a bit of nature behind us. And sometimes the ants will come and bite me. Next to us is a camping site. And you can probably hear some music in the background. So people are having fun on a Saturday. But, behind the [00:50:00] cameras, you see a It’s a construction machine machinery as you’re building something and the crew 

Hung: is working.

The crew is working. Yeah. Who’s filming? 

Jianggan: Okay. On a Saturday. Thank you very much. And further back. I mean, I didn’t see those, but now I see it The wind farm. So many. The wind farm. The wind turbines. You see them? The wind turbines. Yeah, the wind turbines. So just now it was not clear, but now you see like, wow.

Yeah. A lot of them. And a new city is going to be built around, I mean, one of the parts we’re seeing. And it’s really exciting. I think Sabrina, you like to come to Vietnam. I mean, part of that is also because it’s vibrant, right? It’s forward looking. So. 

Sabrina: For the viewers who are confused, I will add a photo in the background.

Okay. So that you know what Jianggan is describing. But, yes. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of the Impulso podcast. We hope that you guys enjoyed today’s episode with our two very special guests. Thank you guys for joining us today. If you did like this episode, do give us a like and share our videos, as well as subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest trends in e commerce, tech and business.

[00:51:00] Digital ecosystem. and bye bye. Signing 

Jianggan: off from Can Gio. Can Gio? The place where we are? 

Nhi: Can Gio goodbye from Can Gio.