The domestic market of granite, porcelain, ceramic and cotto tiles is like a “battlefield.” But, in this context of fierce competition, TRUNGDO has still powerfully grown up to be one of leading manufacturers in central Vietnam, secured a stable domestic market and looked to foreign markets. The secret to the robust growth of TRUNGDO remains unknown.
The following conversation with Mr Nguyen Hong Son, Chairman of TRUNGDO Joint Stock Company, will help readers learn more about development strategies of this leading brand, especially its plans to conquer foreign markets like Taiwan, Thailand and the Middle East. Ngo San reports.
Could you please talk about TRUNGDO’s major achievements in 2014?
Last year, like many other businesses, TRUNGDO faced a lot of difficulties, but with the effort of the entire staff, the company still managed to achieve encouraging results, achieving 10 percent revenue growth, 20 percent profit growth, 20 -25 percent dividend payout ratio, and stable employment and pay for workers. These indicators were not high but prideful. Although the revenue grew slightly in 2014, the value mainly came from industrial production, while real estate business contributed very little.
Not only maintaining the market share, TRUNGDO-branded granite tiles have also built up the consumer confidence to become a reliable choice for projects of national importance. Hence, TRUNGDO-branded products have top creditability on the market because of brand reputation, product quality, customer satisfaction and sustainable development.
In more than 55 years of construction and development, the company has received a lot of honours and awards from the Party and the State. After going public in 2006, the company was awarded the Flag of Leading Enterprises in five straight years by the Government, the Certificate of Good Employers in Construction Industry in three straight years by the Ministry of Construction, and a plenty of medals, certificates of merits, and national awards.
TRUNGDO embraces the operation philosophy of “sustainable growth, cost reduction and guaranteed product quality.” However, at present, due to economic difficulties, input costs are on the rise; can TRUNGDO solve cost issues to keep product prices stable for customers?
TRUNGDO always understands and sympathises with low incomes of Vietnamese consumers. Although the profit margin on products has been reduced in recent years, we always stick to our philosophy: Keeping prices stable to share difficulties with customers.
The pluses of TRUNGDO products are affordable prices, stable and improved quality. We economise costs from human resources, inputs and production processes to product distribution and local material sourcing to have low product prices. These advantages are resulted from good management, new technology, equipment and regular product diversification. We understand that the “hit time” of each product is limited. When products sell well, we have to research and prepare to make new ones. The domestic market is tough to conquer, but foreign markets are even more difficult. To meet the growing demand, in late 2008, the company invested the second granite plant using modern and advanced technologies and equipment with an annual output capacity of 3.5 million square metres. In January 2012, the company invested in a concrete mixing station with an hourly capacity of 120 cubic metres in TRUNGDO Nam Giang Enterprise. Since then, the company can supply entire products and services for a house, from design to construction, from bricks to roofing and flooring tiles. After using eye-catching but low-quality Chinese polished tiles, consumers have returned to Vietnamese products. Understanding that demand, the firm invested in a polishing line using Nano technology to promote its advantages.
Therefore, in recent years, TRUNGDO granite factories have turned out a variety of bricks using modern technologies. The most impressive product is Queen-branded glazed ceramic tile, a 2-in-1 product. This product marked a breakthrough in ceramic roof tile production technology in Vietnam. In Asia, only SCG Group of Thailand can produce this kind of tile, carrying the EXELLA brand, using the proprietary technology of SACMI Group. We plan to produce in the neighbourhood of 500,000 high-grade roofing tiles in 2015.
We realise that as soon as we make intensive investments, our sustainability, efficiency and safety are also greater. In addition, we produce tunnel bricks, consult construction and trade commercial concrete.
TRUNGDO’s advantages and strengths produced impressive results in 2014 - a very rough year for local businesses. Would you talk about any difficulties for the company?
The presence of many manufacturers resulted in stiff competition and market share shrinkage. This forced us to expand our market to foreign countries, besides recalculating costs and other business factors. Another difficulty was a significant rise in input costs and wages, but we could not raise our selling prices. To do that, we had to focus on developing new products and seek competitive advantages like a completely polished granite bricks, digitally printed bricks and high-grade glazed ceramic tiles. We believe that our TRUNGDO products will quickly dominate the market.
How has your company focused on building and maintaining a quality management system to export to foreign markets?
As mentioned above, in addition to the price factor, product quality is the key to existence. We always maintain quality policies as we see this as a leading factor to achieve branding objectives. Apart from the ISO9001:2008 quality management system, the company also deploys other advanced quality management systems like TQM (Japan) and 5S.
TRUNGDO’s objectives are to make products that meet both domestic and international quality standards for customers. We believe that our TRUNGDO products will soon secure its stronghold on international markets.
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