Goods of different kinds which were decoratively designed for Tet celebrations have flooded the market in Vietnam.
On sale in Ho Chi Minh City are bundles of red and yellow envelopes in plastic bags, parallel sentences and drawings of 12 animals of different shapes and sizes.
Hoa, a shopkeeper on Hau Giang road says most of the goods were made in China, but prices have gone up by 10-15 percent compared to last year.
Besides, a lot of artificial flowers, hand-made ornamental trees such as apricot, banana, papaya and mandarin were also imported from China, Thailand, Taiwan and Japan.
“The expensive flowers look and smell like real ones,” says Minh, a shop-owner on Pasteur street.
Vietnamese goods remain poor in design
Domestic businesses have launched onto the market some items of goods which were purely designed and unable to compete with those imported from China.
Tran Viet Tien, Director of Gia Long Fine Art JSC, says over the past three years, the company has focused on designing some special items of Vietnamese culture to attract consumers such as images of the dragon in the Ly, Tran and Le dynasties, kettledrums and trays of five fruits (bananas, oranges, kumquats, pomelos, finger citrons). All these have pride of place in Maximart, Lottemart and An Dong market this year.
However, most of other Vietnamese goods are poor in design, says a business manager. Domestic businesses should further improve the design and quality of their products to gain a competitive edge over the imported goods, he suggests.
VOV
Vietnamese
