Giay Viet Plaza in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City is one of the 40 showrooms of Vina Giay high quality products. Gluing the sandals’ soles at a workshop of Vina Giay in Cu Chi. Foreigners are familiar with Vina Giay brand. US partners work with the leaders of Vina Giay. Designing samples at the design and sample making department of Bita’s. Designing the moulds of shoe soles at Bita’s.  Providing vocational training for newly-recruited workers at Bita’s. Selecting leatherette for production. An Italian production line moulding shoe soles from PU plastic at Bita’s. Taiwan experts give technical assistance to Lien Phat Company. Sowing shoe counters at Lien Phat Company. A production line making children’s shoes for export at Lien Phat Company. Ms. Truong Thi Thuy Lien, Deputy CEO of Lien Anh Company introduces the model of the material centre of the Company in Binh Duong Industrial Zone. Python skin is also a source of high grade material. Crocodiles, a source of high grade leather for Vietnam’s leather and footwear sector. Python skin products of Ton Phat Company. High-grade products made of crocodile leather at Hoa Ca Crocodile Company. Vietnam’s leather and footwear sector has had spectacular results that have made it the 4th largest footwear exporter in the world and the country’s 3rd largest exporter with a trade turnover of more than 3.5 billion USD a year. Vina Giay, a trademark associated with quality For dozens of years, everyone in Ho Chi Minh City has associated the Vina Giay Brand with fine quality footwear. The man who built up this trademark is artisan Vu Cham, a descendant of the 18th generation of a family famous for their shoe-making expertise in Hai Duong, the homeland of the founder of the occupation in the 15th century in Vietnam. Before 1975, the name Vu Cham was known throughout the upper echelon for his expertise in producing beautiful, handmade, western-styled shoes. After the national reunification he became more famous with an assignment to make shoes for many politicians. With a small sum of money, in 1990 he invested in establishing Vietnam Shoe Joint-Stock Company and chose an impressive trademark “Vina Giay” that means Vietnamese shoes. With more products hitting the market, the best way to maintain the company’s high profile is to assure customers consistent high quality footwear. According to Vu Cham, the trademark can only be preserved if the products have high quality, or in his words, “quality must accompany the trademark”. Vu Cham always teaches his descendants that first of all the shoe-maker must have a good heart, partially explaining why Vina Giay products are always durable and beautiful. When mentioning competition, I asked him if he was concerned about low quality products that flooded the market. He said with a smile: “They have their own way while we have ours. Good and bad products have their own costs”. For many years, he has followed the motto “The customer is god, all mistakes belong to the producer” and put the customers’ concerns above everything. Talking about skills, he said: “Our country is technologically inferior to western countries but our professional skill is equal. That’s why we considered them our teachers in the past but now we are equal friends”. Vu Cham knows that having both feet on the ground is beneficial, so he is never satisfied with what he has achieved. Apart from teaching the occupational know-how to his descendants and workers, he plans to further invest in modern technology, designing skills and management art to be able to meet the customers’ demands. He also has a plan for distributing the products to the markets with 70% of products for domestic consumption and the remaining 30% for export, with the aim of strengthening and increasing the Company’s competitiveness in the new situation. Now Vina Giay has become the largest and most prestigious footwear producer, trader and supplier on the domestic market. Its success has been shown by the fact that Vina Giay products were selected as “Vietnamese high quality products” for seven consecutive years (1997-2004) by customers, awarded gold medals at Vietnam International Industrial Fairs eight times and recognized as a full member of the world’s famous shoe associations, such as SATRA in Britain and NSRA in the United States. Turning the outwork into export strength As Vietnam has an abundant labour force of skilled workers, doing outwork is a strongpoint of the Vietnamese footwear sector, making a great contribution to increasing the export turnover of the whole sector. Truong Thi Thuy Lien, Director of Lien Phat  Footwear Company in Binh Duong Province, which specializes in making high quality women’s shoes for Taiwan, said: “Doing outwork depends greatly on the partners, but in return we can receive big orders, thus increasing our export turnover and at the same time creating jobs for workers”. To ensure the export activities and earn more profits, the units doing outwork throughout the country are vigorously changing their business strategy, especially after the EU levied an anti-dumping tax of 10% on Vietnam’s footwear over the past years. Binh Tan Company Limited (Bita’s), a renowned shoe producer in Ho Chi Minh City invested over 25 billion VND to build a production area covering 25,000ha with a state-of-the-art production line imported from Italy and Taiwan. Moreover, it employed and trained a contingent of 1,250 skilled workers and technicians, raising the capacity to over 3.5 million products a year and helping increase the export turnover in 2007 to 1.5 million USD. According to Tran Thi Thu Thuy who is in charge of the import and export activities of Bita’s, to cope with the instability of the world market, apart from enhancing the production capacity and improving the designs, the Company has made new adjustments in terms of markets. It has not only strengthened its traditional markets, such as the EU markets but also opened more potential markets, such as the US, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, increasing the number of partners importing Bita’s products to over 30 countries and territories. The Company also increased the number of its distribution agents in the country to over 1,000 to serve an abundant and stable source of customers. Unlike Bita’s, Lien Phat  Footwear Company in Binh Duong Province also invested in seeking and using the material source by building a raw material centre near its factory in service of the company and other businesses in the region. This is a course that many countries have followed and attained success, especially in making products for export.