Ten years ago, a South Korean man carried 20 boxes of kimchi to offer for sale at a supermarket in Vietnam, even though Korean kimchi was quite strange to Vietnamese then. Now, his kimchi is distributed to many supermarkets and retailers across 42 provinces and cities in the country.
Kim Tae Kon is a middle-aged man with a low voice and kind-hearted face. He speaks English fluently because he used to study in the United States. He may be regarded as one of the most successful Korean businessmen in Vietnam.
During a recent conversation with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, he repeated many times that it is his destiny to live and run a business in Vietnam. He spoke passionately about his fate in the Southeast Asian nation starting two decades ago.
He came to Vietnam for the first time in 1994 to assist his uncle, who was managing a garment factory in Ho Chi Minh City, to sign a contract with a business partner. He stayed in the city for three nights and four days and then returned to South Korea.
After falling in love with Vietnam, Kim decided to get back to the Southeast Asian country without a specific business plan the same year.
“I saw great opportunities to make money here so I came back,” he said. “All my friends in Korea thought I was crazy. But all people have their own destiny, I believe.”
Because he worked in the advertising industry in South Korea for many years, he took up related jobs at big Korean-owned companies such as LG and Daewoo.
But because of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998, many Korean-owned firms in Vietnam shifted their operations back to South Korea. In 1999, Kim went back to Seoul and did not return for five years.
“I thought of Vietnam every single day during those years,” he recounted. “It is a kind of destiny. I always felt something was missing, so I decided one more time to go back to Vietnam.”
He returned in early 2004 and carried enough money to hire 20 Vietnamese staff to start an e-commerce business. But his company encountered many difficulties.
“At that time, not many people knew what e-commerce was and Internet infrastructure was very bad. I was unable to get the right staff since none of my employees knew what the basic concept of e-commerce was,” he said.
But fortune smiled on Kim eventually.
He frequently made kimchi – a traditional fermented Korean side dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings – at the company and shared the traditional Korean food with his Vietnamese employees. The kimchi was well-received, so he suddenly came up with an idea: “Vietnamese like kimchi. Why don’t I conduct business with kimchi??”
Around mid-2004, he halted his e-commerce business and concentrated all his efforts on making the best traditional kimchi he could. He then stayed in a small laboratory almost every day for four months to test out his own formulas.
He said his kimchi is made of 20 ingredients, most of them taken from the local market, except for kimchi powder imported from South Korea.
When asked why he did not try to satisfy Vietnamese tastes, he said: “Kimchi is an international brand like pho [noodle soup with beef] of Vietnam. So we should not change its traditional taste.”
After packing 20 initial boxes of kimchi, he sat behind a motorbike driven by a Vietnamese woman and went from supermarket to supermarket in Ho Chi Minh City to offer kimchi for sale. Maximark on Ba Thang Hai Street was the first place to accept his kimchi.
“I was very curious about whether people would buy it or not,” he recalled. “Every morning, I went out there to check and was hugely excited to see, one by one, that they were sold out.”
Compared with 20 boxes of kimchi 10 years ago, his company – Kim & Kim – now sells 4,000 to 5,000 boxes of kimchi per day. His kimchi factory is located in the Tan Binh industrial park in Ho Chi Minh City.
The Ông Kim’s kimchi brand has become very popular with Vietnamese. Kim’s company also offers other traditional Korean foods, such as Kimbab (Korean-style sushi), soy-cake, ginseng wine, and soju to Vietnamese clients.
Kim Tae Kon talks to his Vietnamese emloyees at his Kim & Kim company located in the Tan Binh industrial park in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Quynh Trung/ Tuoi Tre News The woman behind the man
The Vietnamese saying “Behind every successful man is a woman” could not be truer for Kim Tae Kon. The Vietnamese woman who carried him by motorbike to sell kimchi to Maximark 10 years ago is Nguyen Thi Kim Hanh, who is now his wife.
“Hanh has worked with me from the beginning since I returned to Vietnam in 2004,” Kim said. “Every time I talk about her, I feel touched. After she graduated from university, she helped me. If I had not gotten her help, I would not have succeeded.”
He added that he introduced Hanh as his wife for the first time to all his friends and business partners at a party to mark the 10th anniversary of Kim & Kim last month.
Hanh, 37, looked embarrassed when talking about her husband. She said: “We have worked together for a long time. That is probably the reason why we need each other.”
She added, “He shares the housework with me and does not need to be served. Sometimes, he also cooks breakfast for me.”
Kim talked to Tuoi Tre Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Koreans living in Saigon – P2: One decade of kimchi Related image(s)
0 comments:
Post a Comment