GroupGSA - Case Study
From the Asialink Business Vietnam Country Starter Pack
Building personal relationships is generally considered essential to succeeding in business in Asia. But where do you start your networking? How do you make your first all-important contacts in the foreign market that you are trying to crack?
According to Australian architect Matt Young, there is no better place to start networking than in the resident expatriate community. Young, who heads the Vietnam office of Australian architecture firm GroupGSA, says he got his first serious breaks in Vietnam through connections with other foreigners living in Ho Chi Minh City.
‘’I reached out to the Australian community and the wider expat community first,’’ he says. ‘’They spoke my language, I was used to dealing with Australian businessmen and there was a support network there where people in similar situations help each other out. That’s always a good place to start.’’
He strongly recommends joining the local Australian Chamber of Commerce (known as AusCham) in Vietnam, and other formal networking organisations for expatriates. Opportunities can also arise from mingling in your residential neighbourhood – particularly if you live in a foreigner enclave.
One of Young’s neighbours in Ho Chi Minh City, an Englishman of Vietnamese origin, introduced him to local Vietnamese businessmen. ‘’It’s very much a referral system,’’ Young says. ‘’There is no Yellow Pages.’’
And it takes time and patience. ‘’You can’t expect to walk into a networking event, give them a business card, and you’re on your way,’’ says Young. ‘’It’s just not going to happen. It’s going to take a year or so just to build networks and contacts. They want to have confidence in you to do the work that they want you to do.’’
After GroupGSA’s Vietnam office opened in 2014, its first local job – a coastal resort masterplan – came through a referral from another of Young’s expat neighbours. The firm’s second local job – doing a concept plan for an opera museum outside Ho Chi Minh City – came via an Australian whose Vietnamese wife is involved in the local arts scene.
After considering all the various options for structuring the firm’s Vietnam operation, it was decided to launch as 100 per cent foreign-owned investment firm, which enabled it to hire Vietnamese staff and to solicit for local contracts. Young was guided through the legal and administrative complexities of setting up in Vietnam by an Australian consultancy in Vietnam, Star Corporate.
GroupGSA started with just three people in the Ho Chi Minh office. It now employs 18, most of them Vietnamese, and has a branch office in Hanoi. During the leaner early period, Young was able to keep the operation viable by getting Vietnam-based staff to do work for the firm’s large Australian-based operation.
‘’That was a good initial income stream that we would have struggled without. Any start-up business has cash flow issues. Before you even set up, you want to know where your first six months of cash flow is coming from to pay those bills because the reality is you might have to do pro bono work to build trust.’’
After GroupGSA’s tough initial slog in Vietnam, the paid work has now started to flow. Its largest current project in Vietnam is a $15 million United Nations international school in Hanoi, on which construction has begun.
Young says one of the keys to gaining the confidence of prospective clients in Vietnam has been to receive regular visits from GroupGSA’s Sydney-based managing director Mark Sheldon, and other key people. ‘’It’s very important,’’ Young says. ‘’It pretty much helped me get a few proposals across the line and turn them into real jobs.’’
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