Vietnam needs to support enterprises to boost the export of handicrafts and thereby improve handicrafts production technology, Vu Quoc Huy, Director of the Vietnam National Innovation Center (NIC) said.

An overview of the webinar on August 26. Photo: NIC

At the webinar “Exporting handicrafts on Amazon”, held this week, Huy said that Vietnam has strengths in handicrafts with thousands of craft villages, traditional products, and artisans. Due to the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses have faced difficulties in doing business, so e-commerce has become an effective business channel to help them keep business afloat.

Through the e-commerce platforms, domestic enterprises have the opportunity to bring handicraft products to more than 200 countries and territories, especially via Amazon, according to the NIC.

Tran Xuan Thuy, Southern Regional Director of Amazon GlobalSelling Vietnam said, recently, the company has continuously coordinated with Vietnamese authorities in the deployment of many activities that support small and medium enterprises to bring their goods to the e-commerce platform, with the expectation of contributing to bringing Vietnamese goods to the world.

In the past years, many local businesses have been successful in selling via Amazon’s channel. Especially, those who are manufacturing and exporting handicrafts are looking for opportunities to export to the US and European markets and want to expand their global operations through Amazon.

Paper Color, producing 3D-pop-up cards, is an example. Le Thi Thien Ngan, CEO and Co-founder of Paper Color, said selling on Amazon helps the company save a lot of operation costs, learn about the market needs, how the market operates, marketing and consumer trends as well as how to solve problems. "This helps our business grow very fast without having to go through the traditional ways," she added.

After five years of establishment, the company has exported its products to more than 30 countries in the world, focusing on North America and Europe.

Towards sustainable brands

One of Paper Color products is sold on Amazon. Photo: Paper Color

According to Tran Quy Hien, co-founder of Ecomstone Vietnam, in order to conquer customers, the products that are listed for sale in the e-commerce channel, in addition to being beautiful and of delicate designs, must be of quality and made of sustainable and environmentally friendly materials.

In particular, products must not infringe on trademarks, because there are some businesses whose accounts are locked for being found selling items on Amazon that have copied designs of famous brands.

Therefore, businesses must be creative in terms of designs or carefully check whether those designs are copyrighted or not to avoid risks. In addition, the product needs to be compact, easy to disassemble, and to transport, Hien added.

Pham Ngoc Anh, Amazon Global Selling Vietnam Senior Account Manager, noted that Amazon gives privileges and priorities to branded sellers who sign up for Amazon's protection program, including advertising diversity, tools to protect their brand, data analysis to control their business on Amazon. 

“Most importantly, the businesses need to develop a sustainable brand on Amazon,” she underlined.

According to Amazon statistics, 59% of customers choose the brands they are familiar with. When a new brand or product appears in the market, Amazon is a favorite distribution channel for its broad outreach. Up to 80% of buyers use the e-commerce platform to find new products.