She is the very picture of a busy business executive as she waits to work with other wholesale traders from the northern provinces of Thai Binh and Nam Dinh.
“They’ve asked our shop to provide some more new kinds of Chinese felt cloth, which are in fashion this winter. Tomorrow, I may go to China to source the products,” the middle-aged woman says. “I’m overloaded with the shop’s work, but it has improved my family’s life.”
It is not just Chuc’s family, but the commune itself that has been transformed by the cloth trade. Ninh Hiep is no longer a poor countryside village but a wealthy trading locality. Walking on concrete roads bordered by many multistoried buildings with glass windows, visitors would have a hard time believing that this commune used to be full of thatch-roofed houses made of dried mud, bamboo and rice straw just over 20 years ago, with every household subsisting on agriculture.
Modern home appliances such as televisions, freezers and motorbikes are common to every household now.
Shops standing close to each other along the commune roads overflow with various types of cloth imported mainly from China, South Korea and Japan. Almost all the families in Ninh Hiep have such shops. Those with large capital own as many as five to six shops, and most family members from youth to the elderly are involved in the business.
The elderly and children sell cloth at home, while the middle-aged and the youth go abroad on buying trips for their shops.
“The shop, with average earnings of over VND1 million (US$58.8) each day, supports my whole family, so I had to give up my dream of becoming a teacher and follow the cloth trade,” says My, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Chinese Department of the Hanoi University. “Anyway, my Chinese skills have helped me a lot in the current job.”
With more than 300 shops providing cloth for most of the markets and shops in the north, Ninh Hiep has become the biggest cloth trading hub in the region.
“We receive dozens of customers every day. They are mainly from northern localities like Hanoi, Hai Phong, Nam Dinh, Thai Binh and
Thanh Hoa. Many of them have become our regular clients,” My says.
“At weekends and holidays, the figure is much higher,” she adds, rearranging piles of various kinds of cloths, some darker, some lighter in shade.
Apart from her husband who helps her, she has hired four female shop assistants to work in her two shops.
Customers are loyal to Ninh Hiep shops because of the wide variety and reasonable prices.
“I come to Ninh Hiep every fortnight. Here, I can chose materials for my fashionable clothes which cannot be found in other markets,” says tailor An from downtown Hanoi, snapping up trendy silks, linens, felt, khaki and wool in eye-catching colors with a relish.
“Moreover, cloth here is very cheap,” she says, after buying a khaki piece for male trousers for only VND17,000 ($1).
Explaining the lower prices and the wider variety of cloths available in Ninh Hiep than in other localities in the country, a shop owner, Minh, says, “We always buy at producer’s prices. And most of our cloth is bought from China in pieces, so no import taxes are levied on them.”
Besides the cloth shops, tailoring shops in Ninh Hiep with qualified seamstresses who turn meters of high-quality cloth into works of art have also become a big draw.
The commune has built on its fame as a place for good, cheap cloth and by offering a diverse range of garments, mainly imported from China. In a shop flooded with garments in a myriad of styles and hues, nearly a dozen of customers were trying to outdo each other in choosing newly-imported children’s coats at less than VND50,000 ($3).
“Besides cloth, I often buy some garments for my children when I come to Ninh Hiep. Prices of garments here are often 20-30 percent cheaper than in downtown Hanoi,” says Thuy, a resident of the capital city’s Hoan Kiem District.
As it attracts more and more customers from the northern region, Ninh Hiep has emerged as a regional textile hub, and scripted for itself an inspiring success story.
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