The Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex) is striving to gain a firmer foothold in the domestic market by expanding its distribution system and increasing the quality of its products.

This year, the group is working towards a rise of 12 percent in total revenue, of which 30 percent will be contributed by domestic sales.

Tran Viet, head of the marketing department of Vinatex, said the local garment market is promising as domestic consumption for clothing and fashion accessories only ranked after food and foodstuff.

In the first six months of this year, the group’s domestic revenue is estimated at 11 trillion VND (517 million USD), a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.

According to the group’s statistics, each Vietnamese consumer spends between 150,000 VND and 500,000 VND (7-24 USD) on clothes and fashion accessories every month, accounting for 18 percent of his or her monthly consumption.

Vinatex General Director Le Tien Truong said that to seek a firm foothold in the local market, garment companies have to enhance their localisation ratio to 60 percent by 2015.

To that end, the group has increased investment in upgrading technology in order to increase production and renew designs.

Than Duc Viet, Deputy General Director of Garment 10 – a Vinatex subsidiary, said that his company has paid attention to technology investment and cut production costs to supply domestic products at competitive prices.

Expanding the distribution network is also one of the solutions to ensure Vinatex products get closer to local consumers. The group now has more than 4,000 shops in the country. However, Truong said domestic products have sought a firm foothold in medium and high-end segments only, while locally-made products are not capable of competing with cheap imported ones.

Phan Chi Dung, Director of Light Industry Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said Vietnamese garment companies need to make more efforts to compete with imported ones on home turf, while paying more attention to developing the retail network across the country.

Garment companies need to work out policies to further invest in designing and applying new technology to produce high-quality and specialised products, he added.-VNA