BIDRICO – DETERMINED TO CONQUER THE JAPANESE MARKET WITH THEIR OWN PATH
Persistent in a journey of more than 22 years of efforts to bring consumers quality and healthy beverage products, Bidrico quickly became a trusted companion of Vietnamese consumers and confidently reached out internationally, building for itself a system of potential export markets such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Middle East, North Africa, Cambodia, Myanmar, etc.
Right in the early days of Giap Ngo spring, Bidrico was honored to be awarded the “Global Ethics” certificate by UNESCO; Typical Enterprises for the Social Environment by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment; and Top 10 Enterprises with good achievements in social security work in 2013 by the Vietnam Journalists Association. A series of good news coming together surely brings you many emotions?
I am very touched and proud when Bidrico continuously “won” so many honorable awards. Receiving these awards means that social organizations, ministries, and press agencies carefully reviewed and considered Bidrico’s business ethics. Partly because we continuously brought high-quality products to the market; in addition, Bidrico’s products brought to the market have never been damaged or involved in any quality scandals.
During the entire development process, we always respected and constantly strived for the rights and health of consumers. This respect was reflected in the fact that Bidrico always invested in innovating advanced machinery and equipment systems, constantly improved production techniques; at the same time, proactively applied very strict management and production processes according to international standards such as ISO 9001:2008, HACCP, CGMP; international certificates of European and US standards such as FDA, FCE, SID, etc. for our beverage product lines. Thanks to that, our products were increasingly improving in quality and completely matching consumer tastes. On the other hand, Bidrico always focused on applying modern technology to ensure Safety – Hygiene – Environment standards; proactively built a green and clean environment based on the following criteria: ensuring food hygiene and safety – personal hygiene, wastewater emissions always meet standards… Typically, according to regulations of industrial parks, wastewater treatment problems of enterprises only need to meet grade B; However, Bidrico’s wastewater is always grade A.
In terms of ethical standards, Bidrico was always friendly, respectful to everyone and actively participated in social security activities such as: building houses of gratitude in Ben Tre; building bridge in Ca Mau; participating in the seafood-catching fishermen program, granting scholarships to poor students in Quang Tri; supporting victims of Agent Orange, wheelchairs for the disabled, organizing entertainment for poor children in Hanoi and other places during the full moon festival; sponsoring the green summer program of Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics; Most recently, Bidrico supported the The heart of the sea and islands program organized by the Vietnam Journalists Association to call on the whole country to join hands and contribute to sharing the losses and hardships of the families of soldiers working in the Truong Sa and Hoang Sa archipelagos and the fishermen in difficult circumstances who drift at sea everyday. Bidrico regularly provided financial support for employees to buy houses, organized weddings for employees when their families were far away and could not afford it… Enthusiastically participating in social activities and taking good care of the lives of Bidrico’s employees also partly demonstrated our commitment to the general development of the community and society; at the same time, it showed the closeness and friendliness of the enterprise to customers and employees through activities for people.
Bidrico was highly appreciated for its stability and development even in the most difficult periods of the economy. At a time when many enterprises were struggling with the crisis, Bidrico’s “overcoming” experiences would certainly be a very valuable lesson. Surely you would be very happy to share these experiences?
“The market is the battlefield”, it is truly a fierce battle and will not “relent” to any enterprise that wants to survive and stay in the market during the current economic crisis with unpredictable fluctuations. With Bidrico, we steadily went through many difficult periods of the economy. “Living” and developing effectively alongside the “giant enterprises” has also partly demonstrated Bidrico’s business bravery and wisdom in choosing the right roadmap and a comprehensive development strategy in the turbulent business world. “If you want to have good products, you must have advanced machinery and modern technology”, that’s why we always focused on investing in innovation, improving production line systems, and modernizing technology. 2008 was considered a difficult year for enterprises, however this was the time when Bidrico spent a large amount of investment in technology, machinery and equipment; not to mention the investment in a plastic packaging factory. From October 2013 until now, we have assembled 4 more production lines.
Right at a time when the economy was sluggish and consumption was decreasing, we realized that it was time for us to invest in machinery and equipment systems in depth and based on our conditions and capabilities, we spent an average of 2 – 3 million USD/year on this investment.
At Bidrico, we especially attached importance to innovation and training to improve the quality of human resources. I remember in 2008, when implementing ISO and HACCP processes, I invited a Doctor of Philosophy, formerly a consultant for Toyota, to lecture on the Lean Manufacturing System. After one week of training, we reduced 85 employees in the production line (moved them to another stage), eliminated support and intermediate equipment, and increased productivity by 15%. However, what makes me happiest is that after the course, our employees still enthusiastically talked about this program and it is still being applied today.
Training to improve the skills of human resources is a key issue, but knowing how to discover and utilize talented people is even more important. That is also one of Bidrico’s secrets to success. During the investment process, I once imported a production line with a capacity of 12,000 products/ hour, but I wanted to increase the capacity, so I set a question, if anyone can solve, they will be rewarded. At first, three or four engineers researched and tested unsuccessfully; finally, by sticking closely to reality, the person who answers this question was a machine operator. I have decided to give him a full university scholarship. At Bidrico, we always organized short-term training courses and were ready to reward projects to improve technical and management processes for employees with the sole concept that training good staffs will first benefit the employees themselves and then benefit the Company. If we had not done this, we would probably have lagged behind other enterprises and would not have been able to survive and stand firmly in the market until today.
For big brands in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, they build their own brand in each export market. What about Bidrico, sir?
When Bidrico dominated the urban area, we thought about exporting. Since 2006, we started exporting our first batch to Germany. In 2007, when attending a course in France, I was quite surprised to see Bidrico’s products sold a lot in supermarkets. At that time, I thought I would continue to export goods to Europe, but unfortunately in 2008, the financial crisis in the US began to spread to Europe, so this plan did not come true. This incident caused Bidrico to completely stop exporting goods to the US and European markets, even though I had previously exported goods to Canada.
When everything seemed to be at a standstill, in 2009, we turned to the Asian market because it was less volatile, while the growth rate of these countries was also high. Therefore, we began to expand our search for potential export markets such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Middle East, North Africa to Laos, Cambodia and later Myanmar market.
After we received international quality awards voted by Business Initiative Directions (BID), the number of customer orders began to increase. Previously, we had not advertised on Alibaba or Google, so the ability to identify the Bidrico brand was very low. Recently, we have also exported goods to 14 countries and have started exporting to the US. In all export markets, Bidrico products maintained the same brand. In the Japanese market alone, they rarely accept enterprises’ own brands but have to produce according to them, except for big brands that were famous globally. We are also negotiating to sell products to the Japanese market and initially have positive results. Just like the Taiwan market, 4 years ago, they boycotted an energy drink brand because it contained caffeine, our energy drink did not contain caffeine so it could be exported and now the orders are placed regularly every month.
For export, before exporting goods to any country, we researched very carefully because once the goods are returned, such enterprise will be blacklisted, making it very difficult to export next time. We exported many of our first products to Myanmar through a potential Myanmar distributor. I think they observed us from afar through the three times we participated in the exhibilition there as well as the times we participated in seminars with enterprises and officials. Even when they went to Vietnam to quietly research, they only came to us once and signed a contract. They know more about us than we know about them. Currently, Bidrico’s export sales also account for nearly 20% of the Company’s total sales.
It is known that Bidrico has been collaborating with a number of Japanese partners to manufacture and process soft drinks for export to the Japanese market. Can you share more about this cooperation program?
In 2013, we participated in a product exhibition at the International Food and Beverage Exhibition (Foodex Japan 2013) in Japan and a number of Japanese partners came to Bidrico to cooperate in production, processing, and sale of goods to Japanese market. Currently, we and a number of Japanese partners are also signing cooperation contracts to manufacture beverage products to supply to Japanese supermarkets in Vietnam.
Japan is a market known for its strictness and perfectionism, especially for quality, food hygiene and safety. To successfully export products to this market, surely Bidrico must have a unique direction?
For the US and European markets, requirements for product standards are very strict. As for the Japanese market, they are even stricter, especially the issue of food safety and hygiene is always top priority, a typical example is that the regulation on antibiotic residue norms in products exported to this market is 10 times lower than in European countries. In this regard, Bidrico completely met and satisfied the criteria of its Japanese partners.
Besides the quality factor, for a demanding market like Japan, prestige and quality are even more important. Awaring of this problem, Bidrico were always dedicated, thoughtful, adhered to the principle of putting quality and prestige first and always strived to bring Japanese customers the best quality products. It was the rigor and disciplined operations that helped the Bidrico brand increasingly receive the trust and cooperation of Japanese partners.
We really hope that more and more Bidrico products will be chosen to enter the Japanese market because our products completely meet their criteria. On the other hand, we are ready to welcome Japanese partners to transfer technology, provide technical support as well as management for long-term and effective business cooperation. We will definitely make our Japanese partners satisfied and never regret their decision to cooperate.
