Thuy Ta - The Trademark of Prestige and Quality

Thuy Ta - The Trademark of Prestige and Quality

Besides being a business showing good performance, Thuy Ta is also well known by the majority of Vietnamese consumers for its’ high quality products and reasonably priced workforce as a whole. The company has been recently awarded by the Vietnam Young Businessman Association with the Vietnam Golden Star title for 2004 - a prestigious award for efficient business enterprises. On this occasion, VIB Forum magazine had the opportunity to interview the Deputy Director of Thuy Ta Company, Mai Khue Anh on the company's products and trade secrets.

The Vietnam Golden Star is a grand award granted by Vietnam Young Businessman Association's Central Committee in a bid to raise the profile of enterprises with highly competitive products into the international market. How did you feel when Thuy Ta from among 155 outstanding trademarks, won the prize?

Vietnam Golden Star is known as a national grand prize, with strict assessment criteria judged by the Organising Board. The prize aims to elevate Vietnamese businesses which pursue appropriate development strategies, offering common interests to the community. Thuy Ta is deeply proud of winning this prize.

To secure the prize, Thuy Ta has made non-stop efforts, bold investments, perpetual reforms, ensured a quick grasp of the integration trends and competitive mechanisms of the market economy so as to market products of fine quality, reasonable price, which satisfy consumer requirements.

Today, an increasing number of similar products appear on the Vietnamese market, however Thuy Ta's ice-cream remains a favourite. Could you tell us about Thuy Ta's key to success? What distinctive advantages does Thuy Ta have over other kinds of ice-cream?

The trademark of Thuy Ta ice-cream has a long history. In 1945, Thuy Ta restaurant by the Hoan Kiem Lake (the predecessor of Thuy Ta Company) produced ice-cream for consumers in Hanoi. Since then, the product has developed its own special quality and flavour, becoming popular with residents and visitors alike in Hanoi.

We give top priority to quality - not only the quality of the production process, but also the quality of the distribution system and customer service, as well as a reasonable price and food safety guarantee. In our company, it is quality that retains customer business.

Taking advantage of the food products of a tropical country, Thuy Ta has selected and put into its ice-cream a wide range of Vietnam's tropical products including Vong village's green rice, Hai Duong's green peas, Lang Son's indian taro, etc., helping to create the unique Vietnamese flavour of Thuy Ta ice-cream.

Apart from its main product of ice-cream, Thuy Ta is said to have introduced two kinds of Pha Le pure ice to meet consumers' demands. Could you tell us something about this product and its position in your company's development strategy?

In 2003, Thuy Ta launched a new product named Pha Le pure ice into the market. As soon as the product came onto the market, it made a big stir thanks to satisfying the consumers' pressing demand for drinks with clean ice, ensuring food safety and high hygiene standards.

The Pha Le pure ice is made at the drink and food processing plant, phase I of a project by Thuy Ta company in the industrial zone of Pho Noi A, Lac Hong commune, Van Lam district, Hung Yen province. The project was developed after extensive market research as well as seeking direction in the production of clean food products, which is given top priority by the company due to its importance.

Pha Le ice is a target product of long-term development strategy by the company. It aims to promote trading services in combination with industrial product processing and production, especially clean foodstuffs.

What is your company's strategy to both preserve your 46-year-old trademark and build it into a strong trademark to compete in the international arena?

To build up Thuy Ta into a highly competitive trademark in the international economic integration process, the company has mapped out a long-term development strategy with a concrete route to the end of 2010 and is striving to fulfil the target. First of all, it plans to boost trading services coupled with industrial production and processing, and carry out the second phase of the above-mentioned project in Hung Yen province. Furthermore, the company will develop its network of restaurants and sales outlets; adopt the quality management system ISO 9001:2000; expand its market to the utmost for the traditional major products of Thuy Ta industrial ice-cream, Pha Le pure ice, Thuy Ta Moon Cake; and also promote new types of goods and services.

The company is injecting money into the production of new industrial products and enhancing the Thuy Ta trademark, following a trademark – product strategy. This means that each product of Thuy Ta will have its own mark in line with its position on market and its own particular marketing programme for best market penetration and expansion.

It is our belief that the trademark of Thuy Ta will grow strongly in the process of international economic integration.

• Reported by Thu Huyen