Apart from being consumer goods, some high-end handicraft products, including handbags, paintings and decorative items, are considered as pieces of arts, so they are very selective about their customers.

Mr Ha (right) introducing visitors to how to make paper paintings from coconut palms

Currently, handicraft exporters are in need of using e-commerce to promote their production and business activities, as well as expand their consumption markets into foreign countries.

Located on Nguyen Dang Tuyen Street in Son Tra District, a house making paper products from coconut palms has drawn much attention from visitors.

Owned by 41-year-old Le Thanh Ha, a native of Nghe An Province, the house is truly a wonderful place where visitors can experience comfortable and close-to-nature feelings, as well as see him making paper products from locally-grown coconut palms.

With his creativity and skillful hands, Mr Ha has created unique pieces of arts from coconut palms such as paintings, curtains, and decorative items.

In addition to displaying his paper products at his own house, Mr Ha has recently cooperated with the Museum of Da Nang to open a class to introduce local residents and visitors to how to make paper paintings from coconut palms.

“At present, I create a monthly average of between 80 and 100 products in traditional method, which meets the current demand from my customers. Therefore, I have yet to focus on advertising my products to foreign markets”, Mr Ha added.

Ms Vu Thi Minh Chau - a young artisan in making leather goods - is owning her LuKat de Tourane brand name. She receives between 30 and 35 orders per month from customers, mostly from European and American countries.

Being both the owner and the only employee of her factory, Ms Chau has opened an ‘online showroom’ on Instagram to introduce her products. All images about her products have been posted on Instagram with specific hashtags which are the keywords that get she found by her target audience.

Ms Chau highlighted the importance of improving the quality of the products to win trust of customers.

Mr Tran Khanh Duong, founder of the eComBamboo project which specialises in selling Vietnamese-made handicrafts abroad in global e-commerce platforms, said through e-commerce giants, he was previously successful in exporting Chinese-made handicrafts to other foreign countries.

He, therefore, noted that cross-border e-commerce is becoming an important channel for businesses in export.

He advised local businesses to enhance their foreign language skills and trademark building capacity, while paying greater attention to products’ origin and quality to be successful in global e-commerce platforms.