A competition for new handicraft product designs run by Hoi An city inspired the Hope Center artisan team with a little help by Yeah Can’s designers to try their hand at making a toy. For tourists looking for something for their children or grandchildren there is not much available. At least there isn’t much that has a Vietnamese flavour.

These five finger puppets are a Vietnamese family. There is granddad with white beard, Mom and Dad and their two kids a boy and girl. The five puppets combine the old fashioned or traditional part of Vietnam with the older generation but also the funky look of the modern young people growing up in Vietnam right now.

The first stage of the entry is only a photograph. Volunteer Cat who is a great photographer took these pictures for the center to send off to the competition organisers. Hopefully we can win this competition as it not only promises a nice cash prize but also could lead to a very nice order for handicraft products which the Hope Center can surely do with.

The photographs had to be sent off by mid October to Hoi An’s tourist association. It seems that Hoi An is taking the initiative to promote handicraft products in that area. It’s a pity that Hue is not showing similar initiative.

The team at Hope Center has been hard at work with meetings and workshops to think of ways to promote the Hope Shop and its selection of  beautiful handicraft products. The Hope Shop is not quite on the regular tourist route although situated close enough to the citadel, which is a UNESCO site, for tourists who might like to swing past.

Leading on from the SWOT analysis it was decided that a very cheap flier printed many thousand times should be handed out in bulk to hotels, the train station and airport, restaurants and tourist offices. In fact anybody we could think of is going to get a pile of fliers to distribute. It’s a shot gun approach, that’s for sure.

Then Yeah Can has designed a wonderful poster for the Center to be put up in hotel foyers, airport (we hope), train station and major tourist area venues. We have to be a bit more cautious as to where these will go as a full colour A3 or even A2 poster will cost a lot more. Last time the Center even had the poster laminated so that it would last longer in the rainy weather this city gets.

And the final design component will be a stand that needs to go on the pavement outside the shop. Although we actually do get traffic past the shop, the sign on the awning is not prominent enough for people to see it. We have to have a more in your face advertising stand at eye level height.

Let’s see how the new marketing strategy designed by the team at the Center works. Will be interesting to see whether we are going to increase the traffic to the shop and that most certainly will  have a resultant increase in turnover.  So far most visitors to the Hope Shop have bought an item and in some cases have even given a donation over and above their purchase. Hope Center is truly blessed by the generosity of visitors to the Center. Thank you to all!

This week the Hope Center is fortunate to have Olwen Pritchard, a VSO volunteer, visit the Center. She is working for a Center based in Can Tho in the South of Vietnam. Her placement also cares for disabled people and they work in handicraft production.

Olwen is visiting Hope Center to see how the two organisations can collaborate on projects and handicraft productions. She is also visiting to share her experiences of working in a Center for disabled people.

The Hope Center has planned two full days of workshops and meetings and a further half day of product development session. The workshop planned for the first day dealt with marketing of handicraft products and the team got down to working on how to promote handicraft products in Hue and how to get more customers into the Hope Shop.

The workshop dealt with the ever green marketing tool of a SWOT analysis where members of the team decided what would be an opportunity for the shop to take advantage of, or what could be considered a threat such as a competitor opening up right next door.

It was an interesting discussion and many excellent ideas were put forward. The afternoon’s session dealt with implementation of the strategy and the first tasks were decided on and people identified who would proceed on the actions that needed to be taken.

Olwen has brought a range of the products made by her Center the Nhip Cau Foundation to show to the Hope Center’s production team.  They are lovely products made from coconut, rattan or bamboo.

The Hope Center also had TV cameras coming to take some footage of the centre and so Olwen managed to get herself onto the East meets West sponsored TV channel in Hue.

Thanks Olwen for your visit. Your input from what your experiences have been will truly help the Center to move forward with their Hope Shop and make it the success that it deserves to be.

The Hope Shop is finally opening. Great excitement by all. First the religious ceremony with much blessings and prayers. That’s always a given in Buddhist Hue. And why not. It’s good to have. One can never have enough of both of those, blessing and prayers.

So finally the opening will happen in the afternoon of Wednesday, July 27, 2010 at 3.00pm. All welcome who can possibly make it. You are most welcome to come and browse the small selection of handicraft products. There are some new ones as well as the old stalwart.

For those who can’t make it perhaps you would like to support us by giving us a small donation. Click here to get to the fund raising page where you can also download a free eBook with some great pictures of Vietnam. You can download the book whether you donate or not. It’s free!

This has been an event that we have waited for for a long time. Not only did it take some time because of the fund raising and thanks again to Jude for making it happen for the Center. But there were all sorts of problems and details as well.

One of the problems was the work load of the Center. First there was a huge order for the uniform manufacturing side of Hope Center. Then Craftlink, a Fairtrade Wholesaler, placed an order for 450 odd hand woven bowls.

If anything was labour intensive this was. First there was the shredding into strips of chip/crisps packets. Then strips of bamboo needed to be cut. The strips of bamboo were then covered by the strips of the recycled packets. Then the covered bamboo strips are woven and finally the platted sections are tucked into a beading to shape them into a bowl. Intense.

Because this was a tight order every person was called in to help and the shop was totally abandoned. No work was done on either new product development nor the actual stocking of the shop with existing product.

Finally on this Wednesday morning the bowls were dispatched. In the afternoon a team of volunteers moved on site and was ready to help the staff at the Hope Center to tag and price everything. A list with both languages was compiled so that the sales person could learn the English words for the stock on the shelves.

It took many hands to make this happen and the shop will require further attention in the coming days. Everything has to be ready. After all the official opening will be on Monday July 27. This is seven months after the original idea was discussed. But hey. We’ve got the shop.

What was particularly exciting was that during the milling around and labeling of products the shop had it’s first two customers. Two sisters stopped and hopped off their bikes to see what was going on. As chance would have it they had seen one of the T-shirts already being worn by somebody else at the one and only nightclub in Hue. We had tested the market with some personal selling by volunteers at tourist venues. And she had wanted to find the same T-Shirt for herself. It’s a “I love Hue” one.

This is one that the product design team outsourced. Of course the Center artisans did not actually contribute to the making of the T-Shirts. An external designer designed it and it was outsourced to printers and T-Shirt makers. But the point of the T-Shirts was to provide an item for the shop when all artisans are busy with large orders. It will always sell, will be easy to get more of and it’s a great filler when the artisans are just too busy with large orders.

So here’s a picture of our first customer. Thanks to Isleen Leger our first customer, assisted by her sister Fiona. Isleen purchased one of our “I Love Hue” T-Shirts. We hope she loves it and I’m sure she will remember us when she wears it.

Our official opening is on Monday July 27. Remember the date. If you can’t make it, send us some warm thoughts and good wishes. We can always use those too.