Playing with toys’ future

Vietnam’s folk toys are gradually being adapted to the modern world, but it’s an expensive makeover for the small producers that characterize the industry.
Nguyen Thu Ha was wondering what to buy for the small daughter of a foreign friend when she set eyes on some green bamboo dragonflies.
“Seeing them reminded me of my rural childhood, although our dragonflies were much simpler and made from leaves. I hope the little girl likes them. She could use them to decorate her room,” she says as the toys were being wrapped.
Traditional toys such as bamboo dragon flies, rattan craps and paper kites are changing with the times, to the delight of modern Vietnamese parents, and are finding greater acceptance abroad if the number of export orders is anything to go by.
Nguyen Huu Binh, who owns a rattan and bamboo toy workshop in Phu Vinh, a traditional craft village in Hanoi’s Chuong My District, is one of the beneficiaries of this growing interest, and gets many visitors every day, mainly foreign tourists.
Binh has formed close commercial links with gift shops in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang and Hai Phong, and sells much of his output through these tourist-oriented stores.
An American businessman enters a gift shop in Hanoi with obvious relish and buys some traditional toys. Chris Brooks makes a beeline for shops like this whenever he comes to Vietnam.
“I buy a lot here to give my friends,” he says. “Through the products, they may understand more about Vietnam’s culture.”
Tourists from Europe, the US and Japan are not averse to shelling out several dollars for an interesting traditional toy.
Many traditional toys get shipped to the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, where their novelty and cultural characteristics appeal to the inhabitants.
Back to Binh, who exports 50,000-70,000 toys per month in peak periods, said “before, we were only shipping abroad 1,000 bamboo dragonflies with one-meter wings.”
Everyone in his family, from grandparents to children, is involved in the production stages, and many other villagers in the area are employed by the business too.
“This work allows each of them to earn more than VND1 million (US$56.03) a month,” says Binh.
To boost his domestic and export sales, the master toymaker is getting more into marketing, product diversification and quality improvement.
Finding new markets for traditional toys depends on better marketing to mold consumer attitudes, improved methods of production, and more training to supply the toy workshops with sorely needed skilled personnel, but a lack of money stymies the efforts to progress.
“We rely on word of mouth to sell our products,” says Nguyen Van Dinh, who owns a traditional toy workshop in Thach Xa Commune in Hanoi’s Thach That District.
“We want to advertise in the media and display our products at trade fairs, but it’s too costly.”
“We wish that the state would do more to help traditional craft production establishments like ours, especially in technical and capital terms, so that we could raise our competitiveness,” Dinh laments.