VTI

Today was Viet Thai International day.  Today we met with several of the ventures that VTI has running.  VTI was originally a coffee distributer that turned into a coffee café.  From there, the people who run VTI, two brothers with the last name Thai, have expanded it into a very large corporation.  This corporation has branches in mostly food and clothing retail, but is one of the premier businesses in Vietnam.

We started by listening to one of the brothers talk about his experiences as an expatriate and how that made him into the hungry business man he is today.  This led into a general discussion on the difficulties of entering the Vietnamese market.  Most of the stuff was related more towards the business majors than the engineers, but there was some applicability there.

Next, we learned about the Hard Rock Café, a venture VTI is into.  The manager worked his way up through the ranks.  This was mostly about how managing a Hard Rock Café works.  Finally, we talked to the human resource officer for Highlands coffee.  This was a guy who had worked for Starbucks for 15 years and then came to expand Highlands.  Because he had been in the Asian market for so long, he had fascinating examples of what it was like to live and work in various Asian companies.  Discussion did not stick with Highlands Coffee.

We also went to the Bantan market.  It was noisy, crowded, and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  There we learned how to barter through trial and error, a valuable skill that will be used in other markets like this.  After that, we went to Karaoke with VTI employees.  Although it was still a fun experience, it was not as enjoyable as the one on Saturday with the UEF kids.  Mostly because we were not as close to the people there.