VN charms foreign retailers

The country has a large population of over 90 million in which the youth is the majority. The condition is advantageous for the retail sector to flourish as youngsters often change their consumption habits.

In the first two months, Xiaomi Group (China) shook hands with Digiworld to open the first Mi Store shop in Viet Nam to distribute mobile phones, magic health bracelets, spare battery chargers, LED lights, vacuum cleaners, and cookers. As scheduled, by late 2018, Mi Store will cover 15 big cities in Viet Nam. 

G25 also founded a joint venture with Sonkimland and expected to open 2,500 retail shops in Viet Nam within the next ten years. 

Since its WTO membership (in 2017), Viet Nam has totally opened up its domestic retail sale market. 

In addition, a rapid consumption growth pace is a weighty potential of the Vietnamese  retail sale market.  

The market witnessed a series of large-scale acquisitions and merges, especially Thailand-based Berli Jucker bought out Metro Viet Nam and Central Group (Thailand) purchased supermarkets and commercial centers of Big C Viet Nam. 

Vingroup also took over supermarket chains of Ocean Mart, Vinatexmart, and Maximark. 

Mr. Vu Vinh Phu, former President of the Ha Noi Supermarket Association was quoted as saying that even though Viet Nam houses about 1,000 convenient shops, hundreds of supermarkets and commercial centers, the number remains modest in comparison with the population scale of 90 million. 

On the other hand, Viet Nam still lacks competent Vietnamese retailers such as Saigon Coop and VinGroup, leaving the potential market segment for foreign retailers. 

Raising business quality

The Ha Noi Supermarket Association estimated that foreign domestic businesses held a half of Viet Nam’s retail sale market share. 

In the coming time, domestic retailers would face the risk of lower market shares due to the lack of experience, investment scale and manpower resources. 

Experts forecast that in 2018, the retail sale market would continue to be an attractive destination for enterprises. 

Earlier, the Government assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade to work with relevant agencies to support domestic distributors./. 

By Khanh Phuong