This Vietnamese Ship Model Maker Has Been with Alibaba for 18 Years Strong

My name is Eric Vuong. I've been in the ship model business since 2001.

At that time, I was an international student. By the time I was a senior, I was totally broke. I asked my parents to give me some money to help with my college, instead, they decided to send me a container of ship models.

I had no idea what to do with them, but because I ran up all the money, I had to figure out how to sell my ship models. The first thing that I thought of was the swap meet, so I went to a swap meet and spent $500 renting a truck. I could only sell one small model. It’s like $30. So, I lost money the first time.

But I learned one big lesion from that time. Some people from the swap-meet told me “There was a show specifically about ship models. You should bring your ships there.” So there I brought a bunch of models and made about $5000 at that event. But it didn’t stop there.

At that event, one customer told me about a trade show, so that’s where I started. The first trade show I went to with my girlfriend back then, my wife now, was the airline show. Everybody was crazy about our ship models. We spent a lot of time talking to customers. I remember it was a three-day event. By the last day, my voice was all lost. We were so happy, and that’s how we started to go into wholesale.

“25 years ago, my parents were able to give jobs to 100 people.”

My father grew up on the boat. He was a handyman and very good at fixing things and building stuff. I remember one day, there was a man from New York and he came to Vietnam looking for people that could build handicrafts. He brought over a ship model kit, and he asked if someone could help him build it. And then my dad finished the model within a few days. The man was so impressed that he chose my dad to become his partner. That’s how my parents started the business in 1999.

Then my dad asked all the people that he knew from his village and started a factory. Those villagers made woodwork for a living. They used to work in a family and made furniture. So, we put them together and they build not only ship models but the full-scale wooden boats, the ones that you can use on water. All of our models and ships are handmade from scratch.

That was 25 years ago when Vietnam’s economy was still pretty low. My dad was able to give about 100 people jobs.

“This man found us on Alibaba, flew in on a private jet and ordered everything in my catalog!”

I think I met Alibaba in Vegas. That's about 18 years ago. We were going to a different event. And then I see a few people walking around carrying orange bags. I was curious and went up to check out. I only heard about Alibaba in the old storybook. I was like “I am a factory; I am also a producer. Can I advertise on Alibaba?” They were like, why not?

So, after that, I think I started to advertise our product from Vietnam on Alibaba. Didn't expect a lot, but our business took off from that time. When we started to advertise on Alibaba, we started to have customers from Europe and America, retailers, consumers, wholesalers, distributors.

There was one customer from the Bay Area who called me on the phone and flew into my warehouse on a private jet. I gave him my catalog and he opened the first page and went like “5 of these, 5 of these, 5 of these…” He ordered everything in my catalog.

Later on, I found out he was actually a real estate tycoon. He was like “Every time you have a new item, call me.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Do you know a website called Alibaba?” He asked back.

Oh. I love this customer.

“That’s how people are looking for a new product now.”

I think I am one of the first factories to do business with Alibaba from Vietnam. And then after that, I started to see all the people to list the product on that website. Alibaba has expanded to a lot of different things, to retail, to high end products, and then AI.

Everything is up there. You can see a product in a high-quality image video. And you can interact with the supplier easily. That’s how people are looking for a new product now.

I have a team in Vietnam that handles Alibaba. We are trying to increase our services and products to get a 4-star rating. The rank is based on three main things: the product that you’re selling, the service that you provide to your customer by responding to inquiries fast, and the marketing. You just upload the product up there and do nothing. You have to try to have the best picture, the best image, sometime video, and then so that we have a lot of clicks.