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Purchase of US town to help boost VN goods
The purchase by a Vietnamese national of Buford, a town in the US state of Wyoming, as a springboard to introduce Vietnamese goods in America has been praised by the local business community.
While some local businesspeople once suspected the feasibility of such a "risky business plan," many now consider Pham Dinh Nguyen's decision "daring and wise."
The story began in April 2012 when Nguyen bid $900,000 at an auction for the town. At that time, Buford had only one resident, a convenience store, a filling station and a telephone booth. It attracted about 1,000 to 2,000 visitors per day.
Nguyen has plans to change the town's name to PhinDeli on September 3, at which time he will begin offering all visitors to the town free Vietnamese coffee.
"The name is a combination of phin, which is the Vietnamese word for the small metal French drip-filter used for coffee, and deli, an abbreviation for the English word delicious," said Nguyen.
"I hope that selling Vietnamese coffee in the US will promote the product and the Vietnamese coffee-drip style to American consumers," said Nguyen.
Nguyen said he had "appointed" former owner Don Sammons as "co-mayor" of the town, which is located 8,000 feet from Interstate 80, the main cross-country route between New York City and San Francisco.
He said he would turn a 200-sq.m. convenience store into a cafe that will sell two types of products, "deluxe" and "super-clean" coffee.
The coffee, which has passed all requirements by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for sale in the country, will be sold in 250 – 500g packages, Nguyen said.
To inform drivers of the town, new billboards with the PhinDeli name will soon replace old ones along the highway from Cheyenne, Wyoming to the town.
The businessman's first targeted consumers are Vietnamese – Americans, who are more familiar with the Vietnamese-style drip method.
Nguyen will first distribute the products via Amazon, and will then try to place them at Asian supermarkets, then at larger chains like Wal-Mart or Cosco.
However, Nguyen admitted that it would be a tough road ahead for his business to gain success in the US.
"Everything is not simple, but I'm ready to pursue this dream of selling Vietnamese coffee in the US," the 39-year-old Nguyen told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.
Commenting on Nguyen's business plans in Viet Nam Education news magazine, chairman of the Ha Noi Real Estate Association Nguyen Huu Cuong said: "This is a big businessman with a strategic vision."
Cuong considers Nguyen's purchase of the US town as an act of "catching the US market early," describing it as something similar to local investors' purchase of plots of land in western areas of Ha Noi five years ago.
According to Nguyen Minh Phong, head of the Economic Research and Development Division under Ha Noi's Institute for Socio-Economic Research and Development, the amount of money Nguyen paid for Buford was just one-fifth of the value of a house near Truc Bach Lake in Ha Noi ($5 million) bought by a businessman a few years ago.
"It's encouraging to see a Vietnamese businessman own a private town abroad," Phong was quoted as saying by VTC news.
According to coffee-market analyst Nguyen Quang Binh, many Vietnamese coffee brands have tried to enter the US market, which has 100 million coffee drinkers, but "it has not been easy to achieve success."
"I like very much the new name of the town PhinDeli. It makes me think of coffee aroma and tastes, and it sounds very Vietnamese," Binh said.
"Nguyen is a businessman who thought differently when he purchased Buford and renamed it PhinDeli. Now he is bringing Vietnamese coffee to a big consumer market," Binh told Viet Nam News.
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