Find your own path in the pandemic

​Mr. Nguyen Vu Huy Hoang, Director of Hmedia Communication Company, is training the online marketing skills for businesses. 

In order to "survive" through the epidemic, many businesses and companies have actively and creatively found their own ways to overcome the difficult situation.

Facing difficulties

Appeared in Bien Hoa City not long ago, the brand name Granma Lu bread has also been known by many people in Bien Hoa City. Mr. Luu Quy Dong, from Buu Long Ward (Bien Hoa City) - one of the people who brought Granma Lu bread to the people of Bien Hoa City shared the start-up experience of him and his staff during the challenging period when trying to open new branches in Ho Chi Minh City.

Mr. Dong said, in November 2019, he and his associates had just signed a contract to rent a store in Ho Chi Minh City to open one more branch for selling bread. February 2020 was the time when he officially took over the store then the pandemic came. Because the contract has been signed, the only way is to remodel the site and open the store. It is expected to open in May 2020, but due to the epidemic, it will not be opened until July 2020 for the first selling branch in Ho Chi Minh City. In the first few months, Mr. Dong's group had to spend a contingency fund to pay the cost of the premises. "However, it was that difficult time making us to change so that we could maintain our business during the epidemic situation," said Mr. Dong.

After the unsuccessful business with a bubble tea and snack shop in Ho Chi Minh City, Ms. Nguyen Ngoc Tra My, from Phuoc Khanh Commune (Nhon Trach district) returned to her hometown to start the business over again. Ms. My took a trial sale by locating a bubble tea cart in the front of the home appliance store of her family. She said that selling bubble tea like this helps her earn an average net income of about VND20 million per month.

Succeeding with the bubble tea selling, Ms. My opened other branches in Vinh Thanh and Dai Phuoc communes. To find out the secret in making bubble tea, she went to the cafe selling bubble tea and snacks that are loved by young people in Bien Hoa City, and even Ho Chi Minh City to drink and try to find out the method of how to make those drinks. Starting from one common kind of bubble tea with many flavors and juices, her shop now has 40 different types of drinks. In addition to selling drinks directly, Ms. My expands her business online. Thanks to the difference in doing business, the 3 points of selling bubble tea bring in an average income of VND200-300 million per month. However, the epidemic has affected her business. The number of customers coming to the café has decreased significantly, only customers who buy take out and order online. As a result, revenue also fell by almost a half.

Besides maintaining the model of growing abalone mushrooms, growing organic vegetables, raising pigs and chickens, at the end of 2020, Ms. Hoang Thi Van, living in Ngo Quyen Hamlet, Bau Ham 2 Commune, Thong Nhat District together with her friend doing business in restaurants. Soon after opening the restaurant, the Covid-19 epidemic outbreak happened, causing the sharp decline of number of customers, sometimes there were no customers. In order to overcome the pandemic, Ms. Van also discussed with the landlord to reducing the rental cost, at the same time, she minimized the staff for service, security, washing dishes, etc.

Actively find your own way

According to Mr. Dong, in order to overcome the difficulties in the epidemic situation, his team re-evaluated the performance of business branches. The group decided to only focus on doing business in one location of Bien Hoa City and focus on expanding the business in Ho Chi Minh City. In Ho Chi Minh City, he actively connects with other businesses, promotes advertising programs on food websites to introduce their products, and strengthen promotions. The most important thing is that the group has had strategies to build brands, change quality and launch new products to serve the increasingly diverse needs of customers.

While businesses and companies struggled to find ways to overcome difficulties caused by the epidemic, Mr. Nguyen Vu Huy Hoang founded Hmedia Media Company, specializing in providing services to support businesses to make websites and run media online, digital marketing and especially video recording for communication, etc. to take advantage of the opportunities caused by the epidemic.

Hoang said, the epidemic will make businesses or service businesses unable to operate in the traditional form, instead they have to do business online. However, in addition to marketing communication, Hmedia also has the service of event organization. The epidemic occurred, the event organization could not be implemented in the traditional way, this stimulated Mr. Hoang to adjust his business strategy, which is to switch to organizing events online - providing solutions for livestreaming; supplementing online marketing training for businesses - instructing them to film themselves by phone to reduce the costs. In particular, Hmedia also offers suitable service packages to accompany and share difficulties with businesses. According to Mr. Hoang, with this approach, the profit earned is only enough to ensure business operation, but in the long run, this is a way for businesses to remember Hmedia and support the company in the future.

With the aim of offering excellent cups of coffees for customers, contributing to spreading the value of Vietnamese coffee with kindness and improving the living standard of coffee farmers, the chain of roasted coffee shops in Bien Hoa City (Mr.Huy Coffee) has gained a large number of patrons. However, according to Ms. Nguyen Lam Thanh Hien, Marketing Director of Huy Tran Trading and Service Co., Ltd (Mr.Huy Coffee is a brand of the company), the Covid-19 epidemic also affected the number of customers coming to the shop to enjoy coffee. Adapting to the epidemic situation, Mr.Huy Coffee has also made adjustments to continue to do well in its mission by offering a new business method to cope with the epidemic. This new product is the bottled brewed coffee which is ready to serve customers. Thanks to the initiative, the coffee shop chain is luckily to keep stable revenue during the epidemic situation.

​An Ha