Ho Chi Minh City seeks to 'take off' its specialties with livestream

Seeing the booming trend of selling via livestream, Ho Chi Minh City is looking for ways to take advantage of it to support OCOP specialties to reach customers.

Ho Chi Minh City is looking to expand output for 66 OCOP-certified products (products under the "One Commune One Product" program) through e-commerce, especially livestream sales.

In Can Gio, over 3 days (October 19-21), nearly 30 prominent content creators and sellers were invited to host a series of livestream sessions during the festival of applying digital transformation to business, promoting and introducing typical OCOP products of Ho Chi Minh City. According to TikTok Shop, the event attracted more than 350,000 viewers, bringing in revenue of 900 million VND.

Among these, many specialties are produced right in Ho Chi Minh City in general and Can Gio district in particular - the place with the most local OCOP products, such as bird's nest, dried pineapple fish, coconut honey, mango, and various types of shrimp. Vice Chairman of Can Gio District People's Committee Truong Tien Trien said that the district has 18 OCOP products and is currently submitting applications for the next 22 products for appraisal.

"We cannot stay out of digital transformation and e-commerce," said Mr. Tien Trien. Of the six communes in the district, the government has registered with Ho Chi Minh City to choose Binh Khanh as an "e-commerce commune", where it will focus on supporting the development of online sales channels.

A livestream session featuring Ho Chi Minh City's OCOP products at the festival in Can Gio. Photo: TikTok Shop

As for bird nests, Can Gio is the largest bird nest farming area in the country, with 520 bird nest houses, total output of 14-15 tons per year. According to Ms. Phan Ngoc Dieu, Managing Director of Can Gio Island Bird Nest Factory, currently half of the company's sales are online, through platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, Tiki and TikTok Shop.

In addition to expanding its diverse product range from bird's nest to bird's nest jars, bird's nest porridge, and bird's nest coffee, the company will continue to promote distribution through e-commerce, especially when the locality is also supporting OCOP products. "In the near future, we will cooperate with TikTok Shop to promote consumption and participate in online trade fairs," said Ms. Dieu.

Starting with the typical water coconut tree in the district, Vietnam Water Coconut Joint Stock Company (Vietnipa) is exploiting water coconut honey on an area of ​​10 hectares. They collect one liter of honey per coconut stem per day, meeting organic standards, which can be done continuously for about 50 years of the water coconut tree's life. The raw honey can be produced into concentrated products and 20 tons of sugar per year.

"In the past, each water coconut tree was only cut down for leaves and bunches to sell, earning only 10-12 million VND per year, but exploiting the honey can bring in 10 times more value," said Phan Minh Tien, CEO of Vietnipa. Up to now, their products have been available at more than 400 points of sale, both offline and online, domestically and internationally.

After harvest, coconut clusters have their stems wrapped in plastic bags to collect honey. To produce high honey yield, farmers have to massage the stems for 5-10 minutes every day. Photo: Vien Thong

Departments and agencies in Ho Chi Minh City said they will continue to implement many activities to support OCOP products to continue to take off in the digital economic environment. At the discussion "Finding the key to breakthrough for OCOP e-commerce" on the afternoon of October 21, Mr. Nguyen Nguyen Phuong, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade, said that they will continue to cooperate with parties to improve capacity and digitally transform the thinking of agricultural product sellers.

According to Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Hoi, Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Communications of Ho Chi Minh City, digital culture, digital commerce and behavior in the digital environment are the three pillars that Ho Chi Minh City is aiming for. "We will organize KOL (Key Opinion Leader, or people with influence on social networks) festivals, in addition to letting them create their own content, we can also give them topics," Mr. Hoi said.

Promoting the trend of shopping combined with entertainment (Shoppertainment), selling via livestream has continuously achieved significant results in the Vietnamese e-commerce market. On the social commerce channel, more than 800 live sessions with the OCOP Market logo in the past 6 months on TikTok Shop attracted more than 300 million views and brought in revenue of more than 100 billion VND.

Livestreaming is also one of the "trump cards" of multi-industry e-commerce platforms. During the recent 9/9 promotion, 14 tons of powdered milk and 14,000 liters of beer were "sold" in just the first 2 hours of live streaming on Lazada. On the same day, Shopee recorded more than 318 million views and more than 1.1 million hours of livestreaming.

However, bringing specialties to the online market, especially via livestream, still has problems that need to be solved to be effective.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Tien, Director of the Agricultural Trade Promotion Center, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that the country has 10,323 OCOP products. Previously, they were distributed mainly through traditional trade, relying on exhibition channels, fairs, connecting supply and demand with wholesalers and retailers. However, the e-commerce channel has grown strongly, especially since the appearance of Covid-19.

"However, when it comes to e-commerce, people often think of creating a website to sell products or doing business on e-commerce platforms. Meanwhile, the majority of OCOP agricultural products are small, without the resources to organize big events, launch vouchers (discount coupons)," Mr. Tien said about the obstacles when wanting to go to multi-industry platforms.

Even selling via social networks, the cost of accessing e-commerce is still a concern for some establishments and cooperatives. A representative of the Ngoc Long Thieng Lieng Salt establishment (Can Gio) noticed that many products are selling well via livestream thanks to competitive prices and strong customer support such as delivery costs, meals included, and returns included.

According to this unit's research, to sell on a short video social network, in the order revenue, the total cost such as commission for the platform, tax, is about 15%. In addition, adding the cost of running ads, hiring KOLs, the total cost accounts for nearly 30%. Therefore, if deducting the production cost, the investment problem of how to livestream to sell needs to be considered.

More difficult, according to Mr. Tien, agricultural products are characterized by being fresh, with a short shelf life, so they need to be transported quickly. "The biggest bottleneck for agricultural products is logistics, of which the most difficult is with fresh products," he commented.

Ngoc Duyen, Manager of Dao Hai San e-commerce (HCMC), confirmed that they can only deliver fresh products within 2 hours for online customers in the city and cannot yet serve the huge demand from further away.

In addition to transportation, fresh agricultural and seafood products sold through the platform require customers to pay in advance, which also limits access to housewives who want to buy COD (cash on delivery). "Products on the platform also undergo stricter inspections than those sold on the street, so that is also a challenge in competition," Duyen said.

Mr. Dinh Thanh Son, Deputy General Director of Viettel Post, confirmed that it is impossible to ensure that agricultural and seafood products are delivered to customers within 2 hours in Ho Chi Minh City, let alone further. Therefore, he recommends that sellers should bring their goods to the warehouse of the shipping unit before livestreaming to shorten the time when "exploding orders" on air.

Sharing the same opinion with Mr. Son, according to experts at the seminar, if Can Gio has chosen Binh Khanh commune, which is the commune closest to other districts of Ho Chi Minh City because of its location right at Binh Khanh ferry terminal connecting to Nha Be district, there should be an order processing center there to concentrate and transport the fastest.

In addition, when everyone livestreams to sell products, it also creates an extremely competitive market. According to research by Decision Lab and MMA, most consumers who make purchases on social media only spend a maximum of 3 hours per week watching livestreams, with most sessions being under an hour.

Compared to the average daily time spent online of more than 6 hours (according to Statista), Vietnamese people do not spend too much time watching live shows, according to the research unit. Therefore, to get orders on air, sellers must be able to build a good channel and have attractive/humorous live content or have informational knowledge, mostly depending on the host.

For example, the Decision Lab report found that for consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, the informativeness (71%) of the presenter is the most appealing feature. Meanwhile, for Gen X consumers, professionalism (73%) is the top priority.

Le Tuan Linh, Creative Director and Co-founder of TikPlus Vietnam, suggests that if sellers do not have enough resources and personnel to invest heavily in livestreaming, they can choose affiliate marketing, which means paying commissions for each order sold through content creators on social networks. Then, they make videos or livestreams themselves to find customers for their products.

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