5 Practical Tips on How to Source Furniture from Vietnam

Here comes the million dollar question for you - furniture importer and buyers! 

You heard about Vietnam, you know their furniture industry is booming and were told their price is competitive. Maybe you are even from the US and it is becoming urgent for you to supplement China?

This is what we will try to answer in this article, with a step-by-step approach and some very practical tips for importers. Let’s skip the theory and go right into practice. After reading this 10-minute article, you should be able to source furniture by your own from Vietnam and know in which direction to look at.

We will directly start the more practical part of our article with 5 tips we are happy to share thanks to V-Trust full time local presence in Vietnam.

For a more theoretical part, you can also find a general introduction about Vietnamese furniture manufacturing scene at the end of this article.

1. Sourcing websites.

 Just as in China with Alibaba, some websites exist specifically for Vietnam and its furniture industry.

However the list and quality of sourcing website is still very poor for Vietnam. Information is often hard to read and limited. Alibaba.com is still the number one directory for Vietnamese suppliers (even though Alibaba is based in China). This may change in the future and we hope to update this article accordingly very soon!

Please find below a list of sourcing websites. Please note that we do not have any affiliation with these websites and that this list is not exhaustive.

2. Tradeshows.

Again, Vietnam market is still not fully mature in terms of promotion and its “tradeshows” scene makes no exception.

But it’s also a great opportunity. It makes it harder for your competitors to source from Vietnam and easier for you to differentiate.

Please find below a list with some interesting tradeshows for the furniture industry. Please note that we do not have any affiliation with these tradeshows and that this list is not exhaustive.

3. HAWA Association

HAWA (Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of Ho Chi Minh City) association is also one of the great tip we can share.

HAWA was established as a Non-Governmental Organization and volunteer Association in 1991. This association today has over +400 members, factories and manufacturers with productions lines in Vietnam. Its members are usually the biggest and most serious furniture makers.

You can find their list of members and contact them for quote.

Most importantly, you can contact HAWA directly (www.hawa.vn/en) and ask them if they would have any contact of factories that can produce your desired type of goods. They have an internal forum where they post “sourcing requests” from foreign buyers, to put its members in contact with you.

Although we met HAWA several times on tradeshows, please note that we do not have any direct affiliation with HAWA.

4. Chamber of commerce

Many countries have a chamber of commerce based in Vietnam (and often in Ho-Chi-Minh). Some of them are very active and may put you in contact with some associations, suppliers or even factories.

The first tip is surely to contact the chamber of commerce of your country. However, to be honest, response delay is usually long (if any response) and some chamber of commerce simply refuse to put in contact importers/buyers with factories.

The second tip (and maybe more surprisingly) is to also contact the chamber of commerce, but this time for countries that have a large manufacturing presence in Vietnam. Indeed, in the furniture industry, many factories are managed by foreigners, with foreign investment from Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore or China. Chambers of commerce of these countries usually maintain an updated list of factories in Vietnam with management or fund from their respective countries.

These chamber of commerce are usually glad and highly motivated to put you in contact with their members. On top of that, dealing with a foreign owned factories maybe less intimidating if it is your first cooperation with Vietnam.

5. Ring the bell

In the furniture industry especially, factories are usually massive and located in huge Industrial parks.

Bearing this in mind, our last advice is to just go in one of these industrial park and ring at the bell of these factories to visit their showroom. Factories dealing with furniture often have the words “woods” or “furniture” on their front gate. By ringing at one factory, someone may possibly redirect you to another factory located in the same industrial park for the kind of furniture you are looking for.

It may be a complete miss and you may lose an entire afternoon. Please already accept our apologies! It may also be one of your most fruitful afternoon, you may encounter your next partner in Vietnam and deal directly with him, without any agents or middle man!

The biggest industrial parks for furniture in Vietnam are usually around Ho-Chi-Minh city. This list is surely not exhaustive but we can already mention:

1. Nam Tan Uyen Industrial Park (Tân Uyên, Bình Dương province).
   Surely one of the biggest industrial park for furniture factories, with dozens of them.
   Located around 2 hours away from Ho-Chi-Minh.
2. Bien Hoa Industrial Zone 1 and 2 (Đồng Nai province).
3. Thuan Dao Industrial Park (Bến Lức, Long An Province).
4. VSIP Binh Duong (Bình Dương province)

About the furniture industry in Vietnam

It is today (2019) one of the biggest product category for export in Vietnam. V-Trust does inspection of such products on a daily basis in multiple locations. Vietnam’s wood processing and furniture manufacturing have strong roots and traditions in the history of the country. With a forecasted annual growth rate of 9.5% until 2020, the home décor and furniture industry in Vietnam is growing at a rapid and steady rate, reaching almost 10 billion USD in export in 2018.

Furniture industry is far from what it was 20 years ago. You can forget about small workshops and small scale family run business (even if they still exist). Instead you will most likely meet huge factories located in massive industrial parks.

As the country manager for Vietnam, I often visits such factories myself to audit them or inspect their products, they often have several production lines, over 500 workers (and over 1000 workers in many cases), foreign management/investment (Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese or even European) and clear production process.

Where are located the Vietnamese furniture factories?

There are 3 main areas (by order of importance):

• In the South, around Ho Chi-Minh
  Around Đồng Nai, Bình Dương, Tây Ninh, Long An and Bến Tre).
  These provinces are all located around Ho-Chi-Minh city and are making the majority of Vietnam export furniture (especially for indoor furniture).
  
  
• In the middle with 2 main regions:
  Around Da Nang (5^th largest city in Vietnam) and around Qui Nhơn (Bình Định Province)
  These 2 areas are mostly focused on outdoor furniture (rattan, wicker, bamboo, etc)
  
  
• In the north around Hanoi and Haiphong.
  However, North Vietnam has a much less extensive network of furniture manufacturers.

To roughly sum it up:

Thank you for reading our article! Do not hesitate to share.

If you’re in need of any support in supplier evaluation or quality control services in Vietnam or other Asian countries, please feel free to contact us at vietnam@v-trust.com. We are always more than willing to answer questions, share insights or provide contacts to help you achieve your goals in Asia.

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As in any other countries where V-Trust operate, all our V-Trust Vietnam inspectors are our full time inspectors only, hired by us, trained by us and working for us only. V-Trust also has its own management team directly and full time based in Vietnam, in HCM.