With the financial support of the B2B programme of the Danish Embassy, the Joint Venture Artwave & Wendelbo Fine Furniture (A&W) has received and celebrated its business license granted just some days before the Lunar New Year arrived.
Smiling happily on the day the license was granted Mrs. Thuyen – local owner and General Manager of the Joint Venture – said: “I am very grateful for the great effort and valuable support from the Embassy in facilitating our Joint Venture established and licensed today.”
At the first meeting in March last year, the two partners Wendelbo Møbel Design A/S and Artwave Ltd., very soon found each other the best match and quickly agreed on a business idea to produce a high quality upholstery furniture production for sale in North European markets.
In August, all the necessary facilities for new production in Vietnam had been mobilized in HCMC. “We are eager to make things happen and believe in it,” Christina Wendelbo emphasized. With such an enthusiastic attitude and strong cooperation between the partners, they already managed to send 2 containers of testing products to Denmark with very positive feedback for the quality.
Wendelbo’s production manager is checking the product quality
The first impression when you come into the workshop is that it is entirely different from a normal production factory. All the workers are working in air-conditioning rooms, while materials and sofas are standing on a shining floor. Lars Wendelbo explained that “the workers should be provided with good working conditions if we want them to produce high quality products.”
With an aim of creating equal job opportunities, A&W decided to employ Ms. Tuyet, who has been wounded in an accident and stayed unemployed for 10 years. Ms Tuyet works as a trimmer and checker, a rather important job that might be found as boring to normal persons, but it is joyful to this lady. The JV plans to offer more jobs to workers with disability.
Furthermore, to make a good working atmosphere and improve the dialogue with the workers, in any birthday of the employees the canteen turns into a small restaurant for a cozy party with chatting and laughing. A&W has done a great job as of part of the CCC (company cooperative council) responsibilities, meeting the B2B’s requirement of corporate social responsibilities.
With a clear plan of what the partners want to do, A&W is ready to take part in the development of Vietnam. Especially because the wooden products sector is increasing so fast in the recent years and has become a top five export product of Vietnam.