This article is developed by iKala, a Human-Centered AI Marketing Technology Company headquartered in Taiwan, Shoplus is an AI-powered social commerce tool targeting SEA merchants who sell on social networks including Facebook, Instagram, and Line. Used by 90,000+ merchants in Thailand and Vietnam, Shoplus provides order collection management system, payment, logistics, live video selling, customer service, and ad optimization at scale.

The car took us ninety minutes away from the city center. The scenery outside changed: from the tall, straight trees common on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City—not to mention the tangled webs of thick black cables you can’t ignore—to small shrubs on long stretches of empty land, scattered among solitary houses or tin shacks. Sometimes a pebbled country trail poked its way between modern asphalt roads.

A Vietnamese colleague who’d worked in Taiwan told us: we were technically still in Ho Chi Minh City. “Doesn’t it (the scenery) change like from Taipei in the north to Taitung in southern Taiwan?” she turned to us and asked.

Sitting in the air-conditioned car, I thought to myself: it’s more like from Taipei to Pingtung, the southernmost tip of Taiwan. This is archetypal tropical climate.  

                       

Virtual Vietnam On the Rise

In 2015, Vietnam’s e-commerce market was worth 4 billion dollars. Three years later, the figure ballooned to 7.8 billion, reflecting an annual growth rate of about thirty percent. According to the latest report from the Vietnam E-commerce Association (VECOM), if this rapid rate of growth is maintained, the e-commerce market has a chance to rake in 13 billion dollars by 2020. That’s 3 billion more than the 10-billion goal set by the Vietnamese government’s e-commerce guideline. In a joint study conducted by Google and Temasek Holdings, titled “e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2018”, the gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Vietnam’s e-commerce was estimated to be 4% of its 2018 GDP—substantially higher than the regional average of 2.8% in Southeast Asia.

All signs show Vietnam’s virtual world is taking off.

What’s even more astonishing is how quickly social commerce is growing in Vietnam. In the VECOM report, 45% of those surveyed said they found conducting business over social commerce platforms to be the most lucrative. The runners-up were official websites, mobile apps—coming in dead last were the types of e-commerce platforms so familiar to Taiwanese consumers.

Figure 1: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Sale via Online Tools 
Source: Vietnam E-business index 2019

This begs the question: why exactly is social commerce prospering in Vietnam? How are these platforms transforming the daily lives of actual people?

Our team set out from Taipei and traveled 1,848 kilometers to uncover the true stories of Vietnamese e-commerce sellers.

Encounter with the Vietnamese Housewife Turned Entrepreneur

At last, our car came to a halt in front of a tin shack. A middle-aged man sat with his shirt off at the door; he looked like he just got off work. It was hard to imagine this was the home of someone who was heavily engaged in social commerce.

As we unloaded the filming equipment, we stepped through a large metal accordion door next to the tin shack. Hidden within was a beautiful little community: modest three-story buildings connected with one another to form a traditional three-section compound. It wasn’t fancy, but it was rich with the flavor of Vietnamese culture.

None of the buildings were very big. The front door of every household was open, giving us a glimpse of the residents inside talking, listening to music, or watching television in their living rooms. Maybe because it was before noon, all the men seemed to be out working, and the older children were in school. We were greeted mostly by mothers, toddlers, and the elderly.

We were welcomed into one house. Our hostess was Truc Nhi, a social seller who mostly operated on Facebook. She sold handmade children’s clothing to help support her family’s income.

Truc Nhi giving a tour around her neighborhood (Source: Fiona Chou)

Truc Nhi was 25 years old and had been married for three years. She lived with her husband, mother, and two-year-old daughter. She led us through the living room and up the stairs to her second-floor workshop. Inside, we found all manners of fabrics, accessories, and tools. A dozen different types of girls’ clothing hung on the wall, ready for her next livestream auction. She had two employees on her payroll: one held a throw pillow while the other tried to wrap different sizes of cardboard paper around the pillow to simulate a child’s dimensions. Once the fabric was in position, they got busy sewing.

It was all a little quaint, like a scene from Taiwan’s cottage industry days back in the 1970s. (Read: A Home, A Factory, A Microcosm of Taiwan’s Economy)

A dozen different types of girls’ clothing hung on the wall, ready for her next livestream auction. (Source: Fiona Chou)

We asked Truc Nhi how she got into the business? She said she moved here from Bình Thuận Province to study at the Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City. In order to make ends meet, she took a job as a home tutor. But the money was not enough, so she researched ways to make a living by selling things on the internet.

At first, she sold watches on a Facebook fan page. Then one day, she ordered a dress for her niece online, and became amazed at how beautiful the little girl’s outfit was when it arrived. She determined to design and sell children’s clothing. She also discovered she liked the “DIY” mentality: she enjoyed designing the product herself. Selling watches was only to make a living, but she found her true passion was designing and selling clothes.

Therefore, she insisted on handmade work.

As business got better, she handed over the watch business to her husband and concentrated her effort on children’s clothing. She brought on two workers to help her; she transformed from an individual seller to a legitimate business owner. However, production was only one segment of a successful business. There was marketing, customer service, sales, logistics, and so much more. She could not handle all this herself. So once again, she searched the internet for quality chatbot services. That was when she discovered the AI chatbot Shoplus (developed by iKala). Whenever she made a new post on Facebook or livestreamed auctions, this software solution automatically recorded customers’ information and replied to their online inquiries. It reduced the time it took to reply to customers, which used to take five to six hours a day, by around 50%.

Truc Nhi launching a livestream auction on Facebook (Source: Fiona Chou)

From our dialogue, I discovered that although Truc Nhi always spoke with the faintest hint of a smile on her lips, there was an independent mind and a will to overcome any challenge, hidden within her petite frame.

It is also possible this is the result of her training in logical thinking and her scientific upbringing.

A young employee working on finalizing a pink dress according to Truc Nhi's design for an order made via the livestream auction (Source: Fiona Chou)

Ever since Vietnam officially joined the WTO in 2007 and became its 150th member nation, the government has actively pursued the twin goals of “modernization” and “industrialization” to meet the demand of the global market. Vietnam’s centrally planned economy was gradually replaced by private enterprises.

Vietnam’s economic structure is similar with Taiwan: small and medium-sized enterprises make up the majority of Vietnamese companies. According to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vietnam, up to 98% of Vietnam’s six hundred thousand companies are small or medium-sized affairs. Under the powerful leadership of the Vietnamese government, and with the steady influx of foreign investment, Vietnam’s GDP grew by 131.05% during the ten years from 2009 to 2018. The Economist dubbed Vietnam “the other Asian tiger.”

The upshot was a massive portion of the farming population shifted toward manufacturing and other professions. Due to this, the nation had a growing need for professional knowledge and talent. Beginning in 2008, the government spent about 20% of its annual budget on developing education. Even so, out of a population of over 96 million people, just 2 million—about 2%—have a college education.

Setting aside prevailing social issues, such as Vietnamese students not acquiring marketable skills in school, which in turn leads to many of them being unemployed; a person like Truc Nhi, who graduated from a very good school, should be extremely valuable in the Vietnamese labor market. She told us her childhood dream was to become a high school chemistry teacher, so she majored in chemistry in college. The unspoken question was: how did she end up here? I couldn’t help but think back to Taiwan. Most Taiwanese undergraduates would probably prefer to keep working as home tutors rather than become retailers or sales managers. Or perhaps, this was only an ideal distilled from the social values of someone like me: born in the late seventies or early eighties in Taiwan.

The Road to Owning Her Own Brand

Out of curiosity, I asked her outright: “If you dreamed of becoming a teacher, don’t you regret giving up on that dream?”

The question brought tears to her eyes, but she kept her faint, shy smile. She said she wanted to find work after graduation, but her husband had his retail job in the morning, her child was still young, and her mother was back home in Bình Thuận Province. Due to all these reasons, she decided to try her hand at social commerce. It gave her a chance to make some money while taking care of family, and she could be at home and spend more time with her loved ones.

She said her own mother loved children and filled her childhood with love, so she wanted to be like her mother, and let her own daughter grow up with all the love she needed.

Truc Nhi continued: she hoped to have her own brand in the future, to set up a factory that produces and distributes children’s clothing designed by her. “Right now, I do the designs myself, and my colleagues produce the outfits. In the future, I hope to have machines mass produce my designs.” She wanted more children to wear beautiful clothes created by her.

Truc Nhi looked gentle but resilient as she shared her life story.

The crew filming Truc Nhi working on a new handmade design (Source: Fiona Chou)

Historically, due to the lack of male recruits, Vietnamese women fought alongside men in armed conflicts from1955 to 1975. In return, they enjoyed a much higher social status. In the modern age, society expects Vietnamese women to produce children and raise a family. As a result, their social status has declined. Of course, it may be Truc Nhi’s own choice to be a housewife.

Whatever the case was, we saw in Truc Nhi her dedication to her family, her gratitude to the older generation, and her love of the younger generation. We also saw her proactive attitude, her wisdom, and the relentless tenacity with which she pursued self-realization despite her limited resources.

The Chinese writer Lu Xun said, “Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made.”

At this moment in history, as social commerce begins to prosper in Vietnam, it just so happens that many individual entrepreneurs like Truc Nhi have found a way to make their dreams come true through digital platforms and modern technology.

Have you read?
♦ What’s the Scoop on “Brick and Mortar E-commerce?”
♦ Small Accessories Empire Breaks into ASEAN Markets
♦ Over A Third of Indonesia's Youth Want to Work for Themselves When They're Older

Translated by Jack C.
Edited by Sharon Tseng

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Opinion@CommonWealth website is a sub-channel of CommonWealth Magazine. Founded in January 2013 with its main focus on social, humanity and policy issues and opinions, Opinion@CommonWealth is dedicated to building a democratic, diverse platform where multi opinions can be presented.

Currently, there are approximately 100 columnists and writers co-contributing on Opinion@CommonWealth to contemplating and exploring Taiwan's future with the Taiwanese society.