Handicraft makers eye Japan
Viet Nam News, Vietnam
HA NOI — Handicraft producers and exporters expect to increasingly target the Japanese market, said the vice chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Craft Villages, Luu Duy Dan.
“Through the recent Viet Craft 2007 trade fair, we realised that Japan was a market of enormous potential for the handicrafts industry,” Dan said.
“Due to a lack of experience, we have not yet fully explored the potential of this market.”
“In the first half of this year, we earned about US$40 million from selling Vietnamese handicrafts in Japan, about half of our total revenue,” said Warashi Tabashi, general director of Warashi Handicrafts, a Japanese importer.
“This demonstrates that your craft products are most wanted in our market.”
Warashi noted that Japanese consumers, unlike their American or European counterparts, tended to buy handicraft products not for mere display but for use daily in life, so products like wooden bowls and utensils, cabinets or rattan furniture are popular.
“Too many Viet Nam products are suitable for display but not for use,” he said.
Nguyen Kien, director of Thai Linh Group, which won contracts from Japanese importers during the recent trade fair, confirmed that two of the contracts were to produce household products like wardrobe cabinets, baskets and furniture.
“The remaining enteprise ordered us to produce lamps, which is also a kind of household product.”