Vietnam's garment and textile businesses embraced many opportunities for a new normal 

More and more scientific reports are coming out to show that we will co-live peacefully with COVID after June 2022. If things are going well since autumn this year, we no longer need to use methods such as social distancing, lockdown,... Covid will be in the same list as the likes of influenza,...

Our lives (social, business, personal daily activities, etc.) are becoming the new normal. From the perspective of business and entrepreneurship, this should be the right moment to reflect and say goodbye to those that are no longer fit; say hello and embrace options for a new normal, for our presence and our future.

Each business owner or startup founder will have habits, business practices,... to be reconsidered for saying goodbye. Here, together we shall discuss a few options for us to consider and shape our own new normal. These options are not just for startups, but also for MSMEs. Innovation is simply never a domain for just startups. The below options can be easily found around us right here in Vietnam.

eCommerce

Do we need to maintain or rely 100% on traditional offline channels to deliver goods? To bring products to customers, do activities in our value chains need to remain unchanged? Can eCommerce platforms be the right option for a distribution channel?

Mentoring

It's super tough to grow our entrepreneurial mindset and management capacity by just attending seminars and conferences. How can we nurture each other? How can we find someone to understand us, have no conflict of interests with us, no judgement and, most importantly, take us under their wing?

Ecosystem

Businesses cannot survive by themselves. Sales, pitching, and fund-raising cannot be the sole focus of a company's activities.We are a part of the societal and business environment. There's a community for startups, as well as for MSMEs. Who are the relevant stakeholders so that we can reach out and support one another?

Climate technology

Vietnam is among the 10 nations worst affected by climate change. But at the same time, we may be among 10 nations that have the most space to apply commercial solutions to combat climate change. As a natural law, like we observe during COVID, environmental impact can kill an industry within months, rather than decades, as we normally witness. Yet, it can create new and exciting industries with the blink of an eye. Business and the environment simply cannot be separated. Will our business models fit with the environment? Our business impacts may accidentally generate current revenues, but eventually may lead us to a standstill, unsustainable in the near future.

The above options are not things that we predict, but actually , these options are available to us and within our reach. Hopefully, we will have more reasons to say goodbye to closing cycles and let new opportunities say hello to us. Saying goodbye is not necessarily because of our pride, incapacity, or arrogance; but because they simply no longer fit our lives.