Twenty-year-old Mai Nguyen Cong Thuan from Da Nang, was inspired by road-trip adventures with friends in remote mountainous areas in Viet Nam to design the first made-in-Viet Nam multi-purpose jacket—a jacket, sleeping bag and packpack—for off-road trekkers and people in flood-affected areas.

Mai Nguyen Cong Thuan showing a sample of the multi-purpose jacket at the Da Nang Start-up Runaway 2017. Photo courtesy Quang Nam

Thuan and his 5-member team (C-TEK team), comprised of friends and fellow students at the Da Nang Economics University, began making the jacket with domestic materials this March. Their jacket won first prize at the Da Nang Startup Runway 2017, with the award of a 4-week training course at Ireland’s Cork Institute of Technology.

Thuan, a third-year student in the Commerce Faculty of the university, was the only representative of Da Nang and one of 17 Vietnamese young people participating in the 2017 APEC Voices of the Future – a forum for youths from APEC’s 21 economies  which is taking place in Da Nang from 6-11 November.

“It’s a great honour for me to represent Da Nang at APEC in my home town.  Our team, 3 members from our university and 2 others from the Duy Tan and Architecture universities in Da Nang, took 3 months to debut the SleepJ for competition at the Da Nang Startup Runway 2017,” Thuan told the Viet Nam News at the sidelines of the APEC Voices of the Future.

“I and Ly Thu Uyen spent time designing and cutting the cloth, while others worked on different sections of the jacket,” he said.

Thuan at the the 2017 APEC Voices of the Future

The Da Nang-born student said devising a design to contain the other functions of the jacket was especially time-consuming.

He said adventure-seekers traveling on motorbikes often take tents, sleeping bags and packs with them for long trips.  Carrying heavy luggage on their bikes is inconvenient.

The first sample of the SleepJ, which costs around 500,000 VND (22 USD), and is made with local materials.  It is quite reasonable for off-road trippers, but it may be expensive to poor people living in remote mountainous areas and flood-vulnerable villages.

“We saw people suffering from homelessness and a lack of facilities when their homes were washed away by floods during the rainy and storm season in central Viet Nam.  That tragedy urged us to make the cheaper SleepJ for disaster victims,” Thuan said.

“The APEC Voices of the Future is a great opportunity for us to exchange ideas with investors about mass producing multi-purpose jackets for poor people in the disaster-stricken areas in Viet Nam and other countries,” he added.

Uyen, a member of the C-TEK team, who did not join the APEC event, said the SleepJ is very convenient for backpackers, homeless people, night ship workers and flood affected residents.

Currently, the C-TEK team has been embedding a small anti-mosquito device into the jacket and other products on the base of the SleepJ.

In addition to developing the multi-purpose jacket, Thuan has also developed a tour-guide programme, Da Nang Free Walking Tour, which provides foreign tourists visiting Da Nang with local guides.

His programme aims at creating opportunities for young students to practice their English skills, while promoting the hospitality of Da Nang, and Central Viet Nam as a whole, to visitors.

Statistics from the National Tourism Administration of Viet Nam revealed that backpacker and off-road trippers accounted for 18.4% of revenue from the country’s tourism.

Thuan hopes the APEC Voices of the Future event will help his product grow, and he is excited that Da Nang has launched its own business incubator campaign for young people seeking chances to develop their ideas into entrepreneurial products.

His said the SleepJ has just been completed as a prototype, and it needs more work before it can be sold in Viet Nam and foreign markets.

(Source: VNS/ DA NANG Today)