By Thu Pham
Oct. 14, 2021
Nguyen Tan Xuan hadn’t planned on becoming an entrepreneur. As a small-town boy from Ben Tre, a province in the Mekong Delta area of southern Vietnam, he thought he found his dream job when he started working as a telecommunication engineer for a large Canadian firm in Ho Chi Minh City.
The job, however, turned out to be all-consuming, with many long days, late-night meetings and tight deadlines. The work was so demanding that it was impossible to even take any days off.
“I felt trapped,” Nguyen said.
Realising that corporate life was not for him, Nguyen started experimenting with starting his own business. It wasn’t easy at first; he tried selling watches and accessories through his personal Facebook page and later tried designing and selling anti-theft products for motorbikes, but both endeavours were short-lived and left Nguyen in debt.
These failed attempts, however, did not deter Nguyen, who saw eCommerce as a way to a better life. Having kept his day job, he was able to pay off his debts and try again, this time by selling healthcare equipment. This third endeavour finally brought Nguyen some success, and towards the end of 2018, he decided to join Lazada so he could further scale his business and grow his customer base.
“Lazada had started opening a channel for individual sellers. I signed up right away and became one of the first individual sellers on the platform,” Nguyen recalled.
At first, he had to juggle his day job with managing his business on Lazada. After finishing work at the office, he would return home in the evenings to pack parcels and respond to customers’ questions. At that time, he only had about 10 orders a day. Wanting to improve his eCommerce know-how, he enrolled in some sales courses, where he learned about customer psychology and advertising techniques.
After six months of launching on Lazada, Nguyen became one of the platform’s top sellers. This gave him the confidence to expand into the household appliances category as well – a decision that has proven extremely beneficial to his business’ growth. Nguyen’s strong performance on Lazada has also enabled him to access a wider consumer base. Thanks to the success he’s found on the eCommerce platform, Nguyen was eventually able to quit his corporate job to fully focus on his business.
As a seller, Nguyen says that Lazada’s support and resources have been instrumental to his business success. For example, he often uses platform tools such as Seller Pick and Sponsored Display to boost his products’ visibility. Meanwhile, with the Flexi-Combo tool, he can offer free gifts to consumers, which in turn leads to more positive ratings for his store.
The young entrepreneur has also found tremendous success by participating in Lazada’s mega campaigns, which bring buzz, high traffic and a wide variety of seller tools. During the recent 9.9 shopping festival, for example, he received nearly 8,000 orders in just three days and managed to make triple of his regular revenue.
Even during the pandemic, Nguyen was able to use his online business to maintain his livelihood and continue reaching and selling to customers nationwide.
“This is very hard time for everyone but I can still achieve these huge orders with a lot of support from the Lazada operations team and Lazada Logistics,” he said.
Wanting to share the benefits of eCommerce, Nguyen became a mentor with Lazada’s LazMaster programme, which aims to connect successful sellers with new joiners as mentors and mentees, respectively.
“I want to make Lazada a helpful place for every seller, so they can easily start their dreams, their ambitions and develop themselves,” Nguyen said. So far, he has conducted two big learning sessions with 800 mentees and more than 10 small learning courses with nearly 300 participants. He is also a district leader of Binh Thanh, which has more than 600 seller members.
Now, at the age of 28, Nguyen is confident that he’s found his true calling as an eCommerce entrepreneur and has encouraged other young people to step out of their comfort zones to pursue their dreams.
“If you are passionate about business, then boldly pursue it. If I can do it, so can you,” he said. “Failures are always valuable lessons for us”.
Thu Pham is an associate in Lazada Vietnam’s public relations team.