Sellers get creative for lucrative Xmas season

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

HCM City (VNA/VNS) – As Vietnamese tend to spend more money during the Christmas season, many local enterprises tried all possible ways to satisfy there “God’s” demands.

Alongside other popular Christmas gifts and ornaments, the Christmas market this year offered more exclusive and unique options.

HCM City-based enterpriseimported about 200 real pine trees by sea from Oregon, United States.

According to Diep Nguyen, the owner of the enterprise, the company decided to import such a large number of real trees after the first two attracted a great deal of attention from customers last Christmas.

“The import procedure is quite complicated, so we had to place our orders in August and received the support from the US National Christmas Tree Association”, she told Tuoi Tre daily.

Even before these Christmas trees docked at the port in HCM City, half of them were booked online with costs ranging from 3 – 8 million VND (130-150 USD), depending on the height of the tree (from 1.8 m to 2.7m). The buyers were mostly foreign expatriates or wealthy local families.

While the real trees seem to be for a group of limited customers, the plastic ones – in different height, colours and eye-catching decorations, were available in every supermarket and shopping mall across the city.

All the Christmas shops located on Luong Nhu Hoc and Hai Thuong Lan Ong Streets in District 5 started their high business season from mid-October.

Ho Thi Minh Tam, the owner of a shop on Luong Nhu Hoc Street, District 5, said all 20 plastic trees and nearly 1,000 ball ornaments that she imported from Thailand for the first time had been sold out within a week.

According to Tam, those products attracted customers because their prices are the same or even slightly cheaper than other similar Made in Vietnam products.

Over the past two years, Christmas gifts and ornaments from Thailand have increased their presence in the Vietnam market.

Ho Kim Cuc, who runs a Christmas shop on Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street, said her shop had rented 15 large-size Christmas trees out to different offices with prices ranging from 2-4 million VND (87-175USD), which were just one-third the purchase price.

This year, the Christmas market witnessed significant participation of many local producers.

According to a representative of the Kim Lap Christmas shop on Hai Thuong Lan Ong Street, two thirds of the 6,000 products that his shop sold in the first 10 days of this month are products that are made in Vietnam.

The increase in Vietnamese Christmas products was thanks to the increasing awareness of local enterprises of the potential market. That was why they hadpaid attention to improving both quality and design of products.

Owner of the Phuong Thao shop on Luong Nhu Hoc Street, Nguyen Phuong Thai, said she stored 6,000 Christmas costumes created by local producers.

“With 20 different designs the price was  10 percent to 20 percent cheaper than other imported costumes. That was why the ones made by local producers have magnetised customers. At the moment, thousands of Christmas costumes that we stored are almost sold out”, she said.

Vo Hong Tan, director of Doma Vina – a company specialisng on paper quilling products said his company introduced to the market more than 2,000 products in this festive season, of which the best sellers were Santa Claus, X’Mas tree and bell.

Like any other previous years, the seasonal service – Santa Claus delivers gifts to children – was still a flourishing business, as the demand from customers has increased year after year.

Ngo Thi Phuong Loan, owner of the Beyeume gift shop on 3 Thang 2 Street in District 10, said that her shop had to recruit a “Santa Claus” a month before Christmas.

According to her, the service fee this year has increased between 15 percent and 20 percent compared to last year, when it was between 90,000 VND and 100,000 VND to between 120,000 VND and 130,000 VND.

“However, that price was for the service offered a few days before Christmas. A day before Christmas Eve, the price was more, at 160,000 VND, and at 200,000 VND on Christmas Eve”, Loan said.

Most of the recruited “Santa Claus” were students.-VNA