game: Peculiarities of outsourcing to Vietnam

The pool of for outsourcing suitable foundries and manufactory sources is steadily growing in Vietnam. Both for lower-end production at mostly local, and for higher-end at mostly Taiwanese companies, the possibilities are a welcome alternative for a developed China after the low wages era. Yet, regarding production outsourcing, Vietnam is no little China. Obliviously, the industry is much smaller. So small actually, that present offshore companies as from Japan and the West, who came to Vietnam with the idea to use local subcontractors, scoop up a lot of capacity at the best sources. With limited competition, this at substantially higher prices than possible for local B2B. Making it as well harder to get global competitive prices in Vietnam from a distance. Because of primitive technical and engineering education, young people do enter the workforce enthusiastically, but have a low general knowledge, and have to learn their skills on the job. As a customer, this makes the relation you have with the one or two key persons, being Vietnamese or Taiwanese, with full knowledge in any manufacturing company very important. Not only for communication about your products, production and progress, but as well simply to get quotations. In general, there are no real working marketing and/or sales departments at these companies, as there are in China. And as such, many interesting ones cannot even being found on Internet. If they do happen to have a website with a contact e-mail address, the chances that that somebody actually reads your email are much less than 50%. A successful manufacturer might be interested in taking on your work, and produce for a globally low price, but to get there, more is needed than sending out a FRQ. This manufacturer (read: the director/owner) is doing well as it is, and is mostly not interested at all to start a project at minimum profit, to get you in as a new customer. Without much calculation a polite quotation will be returned, of a price level you would expect from Switzerland. Do many easy to find Chinese tend to quote minimum, with the idea of increasing prices later, the Vietnamese tend to quote maximum, with the idea that a new caring customer will later explain why it really can be done for a specific lower price. The procedure to get where you want to be is not an Alibaba chitchat, but to show up in person with your own price calculation at hand, show commitment to his company, and drinking at least a few beer at a restaurant nearby. For these reasons, if you are interested in Vietnam as your country of manufacturing outsourcing, you are well helped by a specialist consultancy on the ground. Asian Outsourcing Consultancy has a large network of foundries, mold and plastic manufacturers, die cast companies and sources for sheet metal and construction parts. Because the said needed relations are already well established, the process of getting useful quotations goes smoothly. AOC takes over all communication between you and your supplier. Project guidance and quality control is done by an experienced European Mechanical Engineer and product developer. With AOC you benefit from an out of China high quality at low cost, and above all, solid price stability. Nevertheless, for the reasons made clear above, starting outsourcing in Vietnam should be a choice, and will be in any case a process which asks for time and commitment; most of this AOC can take over from you, but first approach without reasonable target prices does never lead to success. Contact Asian Outsourcing Consultancy at: aoc@viewco.net www.aocvietnam.net