Ms. Nguyen Bach Diep, Chairwoman of FPT Retail Board of Directors, is considered by many in the industry as an iron lady, who has made great contributions to the development of FPT Retail. She shared with VietNamNet about the company's success story over the past decade.
The thorny journey
- When talking about FPT Retail, we cannot help but mention your leadership role. Over the past 10 years, can you share the successes you have achieved?
Ms. Nguyen Bach Diep : It was a thorny but extremely interesting journey. There were challenges, pressure after pressure, many failures and having to constantly correct mistakes. My teammates and I's journey to build FPT Retail was the journey of entrepreneurs, we were given 'extremely difficult' tasks and then we had to find solutions ourselves, opening our own path.
Because it is so difficult, when we achieve the result of an FPT Retail with more than 15,000 enthusiastic employees, with thousands of FPT Shop, FPT Long Chau and F.Studio by FPT stores spread across 63 provinces and cities across the country serving the people, my teammates and I feel more fulfilled and happy.
- Failure, can you share about a time or a failed mission, and how you overcame it?
There were many difficulties and failures, I really don't remember all the difficulties specifically. For me, what's past is past, because in essence, dwelling on it doesn't solve anything. What's important is the next story.
- Maybe that's why people often call you "female general". How do you feel when you are called that?
I don't want to be called a female general, I just want to be a colleague who always stands side by side, accompanying everyone in the company, the main characters who interact with customers day and night. It is these teammates who are the factors that make FRT successful.
- What is the biggest difficulty for a female leader, madam?
For me, there is not much difference in management compared to male colleagues. A leader, regardless of gender, carries the same responsibilities and has the same challenges to face.
The world is constantly moving and changing every day, in each stage there will be difficulties and opportunities, if a leader can quickly adapt and manage his time well, all problems will be solved, all differences can be leveled. I am lucky to always have sympathy and support from my family.
Women leaders also have many strengths of their own, such as sensitivity, diligence, perseverance, a spirit of continuous learning and improvement to assert themselves, as well as a desire to level gender stereotypes.
I personally don't find it too difficult because I'm lucky to have an effective working team and a supportive family.
Opportunity in danger
- Since the beginning of the year, the technology sector of retail businesses has declined. What is FPT Retail's revenue and strategy in this main business sector?
With the FPT Shop chain, the company will proactively launch many sales policies, promotions, and subsidies to continue to support and accompany customers in the context of high inflation and affected income, so the chain's gross profit margin is expected to be lower than previous years.
On the other hand, FPT will focus on gradually improving gross profit by selling more household goods in existing FPT Shop stores.
At the same time, the company will continue to train and improve sales skills and customer service style according to the dedicated service strategy to increase customer experience.
- Many retail businesses choose to reduce prices to retain customers, will FPT Retail follow this strategy?
We follow the market closely and will flexibly adapt to any changes. The more difficult the market is, the more fierce the competition is. If one side lowers its price, the other side will also lower its price. In general, it will pull each other down and it will be difficult to take each other's customers.
Price wars are not good wars, however, to retain customers we will also apply discounts. At the same time, we also find other directions, diversifying product lines in stores to give customers more choices.
At the same time, we also focus on investing in technology as well as improving sales skills and customer service of our staff to bring customers the best experience.
- Recently, Apple officially opened a direct store in Vietnam, will FPT Retail have more competitive pressure?
The appearance of the Apple Online Store in Vietnam is clear evidence that we are a market with long-term growth and development potential, which has been carefully analyzed and evaluated by Apple.
Apple's goal is to provide Vietnamese customers with a variety of genuine Apple products through multiple channels, and receive a consistent standard experience through Apple's services and team of experts. Therefore, the online Apple Store does not aim to gain market share or compete with existing retail systems in the Vietnamese market.
Taking a closer look at the market and Vietnamese consumer habits, we see that there will be no impact.
In reality, in the current fierce market competition with Apple products, Apple online stores will find it difficult to "attract" Vietnamese customers in terms of: price; online-only delivery policy (no offline experience/receipt); return policy at the time of receiving the device if there is a hardware/cosmetic error, technical support service for data conversion, SIM or warranty support.
Besides, in terms of understanding customer habits, needs and geographical scope, an online store can hardly completely replace the FPT store system that has served customers for more than 10 years and has a wide range of sales points in 63 provinces and cities.
Strong support from the "giant"
- In 2022, Long Chau pharmacy chain was a great success when it surpassed many competitors to become the market leader. What made this success?
FPT Long Chau's current position is the result of a combination of many factors, including three main ones: First, the determination to do and be able to do of the leadership and the consensus of the staff. Second, the experience in building, operating and developing the FPT Shop retail chain has been transferred to the pharmacy chain. Third, the available resources from FPT Shop. When expanding the Long Chau chain, FRT transferred resources from FPT Shop. In addition, FRT also received additional financial and technological support from FPT Corporation.
With strong support from the "giant" FPT, FPT Long Chau is moving towards complete automation to most effectively exploit resources in the pharmaceutical retail chain sector in particular and the e-commerce industry in general, meeting the needs with the best service quality and experience for all customers across Vietnam.
- What competitive advantages does Long Chau have over competitors and traditional pharmacies?
FPT Long Chau is assessed to have the right orientation and operation in the pharmaceutical retail industry, specializing in medicine, owning a diverse product portfolio, full of quality medicine groups to serve the people. This allows Long Chau to fully meet the increasing demand for medicine to treat diseases, especially hospital prescription drugs and rare medicines.
Furthermore, FPT Long Chau inherits technology from FPT Corporation, from store management to optimize costs to technology to serve customer experience. The more we understand customers, the more satisfied they will be.
In the long term, Long Chau also hopes that the pharmacy chain will bring more health care services to customers, not just medicine. That is to exploit the upper part of the pharmaceutical sector to help bring about sustainable growth.
Vietnamnet.vn
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