A Vietnamese company has set up a network of retail shops around the country by upgrading existing shops and providing them with financial assistance and expertise.
G7mart held an official ceremony in HCM City last week where it announced 500 shops had come under its umbrella. It has invested VND50-200 million in each shop besides providing them with training in modern salesmanship and management.
The shops will all now buy their stocks from G7 which has also started a wholesale distribution business.
Dang Le Nguyen Vu, chairman of G7 Trading and Service Joint Stock Company which runs the network, said he expected the number of retail shops to increase to 5,000 by 2010.
Soon, customers at G7marts would be offered services like payment of electricity, water, internet, and telephone bills, he said.
A further 9,500 shops are expected to come on board by the end of this month. However, they will initially not be standard G7marts though they will buy their products from G7 and sell under its name. They will get no funding or training either.
Vu said the local retail industry needed to be strong as various big international retail names like Walmart and Tesco would enter Viet Nam once the country joined the WTO.
Viet Nam has been rated the world’s third most attractive retail market by consulting company AT Kearney with an annual growth of 20 per cent. Its retail sales stood at US$21 billion last year.
Last year traditional markets and shops, mostly family-owned, represented 90 per cent of the sales, leaving 10 per cent for the modern retail market.
Vu cited the cases of China and Thailand where foreign retail giants entered the country and took over the market, at one point grabbing 60 and 80 per cent share respectively.
Besides competing with foreign upstarts in Viet Nam, he also plans to take them on in other markets: he plans to set up a retail network called Viet Town which will bring together Vietnamese companies to sell Vietnamese products abroad.
He is now working with a Singaporean company to set up the first Viet Town on the island. — VNS
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