Shake hands to bring OCOP products to the world market

	Upgrade OCOP products to easily export
	Binh Phuoc’s cashew nuts recognised 5-star OCOP product

Coconut honey is one of the products that have reached the 4-star OCOP standard of Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: TL

Increase "soft power"

Over the years, the One Commune One Product (OCOP) program has promoted the strength and role of the community in preserving and developing traditional products of each locality. The program also formed the strongest start-up movement, which is cooperatives, small and medium-sized enterprises, which have formed many areas of clean agricultural products, high-tech agriculture associated with the product value chain...

By coming up from the villages themselves, OCOP products may have a small scale, but they are very unique and imbued with the cultural values, soil, and skills of the people who make them. This is also considered a key to OCOP products to have an advantage when competing in the market. Accordingly, OCOP products must exploit and approach the market in a different way, which is based on the local uniqueness of the product. Product stories are considered as "soft power" to help improve communication efficiency, promote OCOP products when it can touch the emotions and hearts of customers, change customer behavior, become part of the reason for the purchase.

However, in the past time, exploiting the story of OCOP products has not been paid attention, leading to limited communication and promotion effectiveness. Vo Phuong Thuy, Deputy Director of Dong Thap Department of Industry and Trade, explained that most OCOP enterprises are small and micro-sized, so it is necessary to take care of everything from product ideas, packaging design, marketing... encountered many difficulties, so its effectiveness is also limited.

To change this reality, the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ho Chi Minh City and Tiki Co., Ltd. (Tiki e-commerce platform) have just signed a cooperation agreement to build a program "1,000 sentences OCOP product story” with the desire to tell the cultural story of each community behind each OCOP product to consumers.

Sharing about this program, Nguyen Quach Nhi, Sales Director of the consumer food industry - Tiki Co., Ltd. said that currently there are quite a few OCOP products sold on Tiki, but the ability to sell them lower than other products. Only with Tin fish sauce product (which has reached OCOP 4) standards, after Tiki cooperated to build a video clip telling the story of the product, the sales of Tin fish sauce on Tiki increased very quickly, reaching the billions VND/year.

Accordingly, in addition to helping to put products on the e-commerce floor, in the coming time, Tiki will coordinate with the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ho Chi Minh City to select the most typical products of each province to invest, build videos to introduce products, communities, convey unique stories. Tiki will support market research units, consulting to select typical products; accompanies with localities and cooperatives and enterprises to develop content, scripts and messages; connecting to quality video production units, supporting optimal production costs, post-production and accompanying in the video production process and promoting on Tiki's channels.

Nguyen Huu Hoai Phu, Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, hopes that the program will help local specialties go far away from the village markets, even reaching out to the world as in the case of tomato sauce, gotu kola products… have been exported to dozens of countries around the world.

Promote the export of bird's nests

Truong Tien Tien, Vice Chairman of Can Gio District People's Committee (HCMC) said that among the 12 4-star OCOP products of Can Gio, bird's nest is the product with the greatest potential, suitable for piloting building a brand of special agricultural products of Ho Chi Minh City in the current period. Currently, Can Gio's bird's nest harvest is up to 14 tons/year. However, last time, the nests harvested in the district are mainly consumed domestically.

From a business perspective, Nguyen Quach Nhi said that Vietnam's bird's nest is being evaluated by major markets as having the best quality and is priced higher than similar products from other countries. This is one of the bases for Ho Chi Minh City to choose bird's nest as a pilot product in the Can Gio agricultural product branding program organized by the Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ho Chi Minh City, the People's Committee of Can Gio District cooperating with Tiki to deploy.

Nguyen Nguyen Phuong, Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade also said that although Can Gio's bird's nest has not been branded yet, it is considered to be of outstanding quality production area code in Can Gio. In addition, with the Can Gio Biosphere Reserve (sac forest) with an area of over 75,000 hectares, Can Gio meets natural conditions to develop high-quality, sustainable and large-scale swiftlet farming materials.

Salanganes'Nest products are branded in the high-end segment, bringing great economic value. The successful construction of the ecosystem for farming, production, trading and exporting bird's nests in Can Gio will make a significant contribution to the economic development of Ho Chi Minh City; at the same time, helping the people of Can Gio in particular and HCMC in general have conditions to improve their lives and get rich.

In order to develop the Can Gio bird's nest value chain, according to Mr. Phuong, the construction of a closed production process, supply chain control, quality standardization, etc. is essential and relatively convenient in terms of conditions. Currently, this is also a sustainable basis for building and developing the Can Gio bird's nest brand to become a big brand of Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam, similar to Korean ginseng, New Zealand Manuka honey...