Asanzo built a 'Vietnamese' brand on Chinese goods — and it collapsed

Asanzo was a fast-growing Vietnamese electronics brand, founded in 2013, that sold televisions, rice cookers, air conditioners and speakers under a proudly home-grown banner. It positioned itself as a Vietnamese champion offering affordable appliances to domestic shoppers, and for a few years it was one of the country's best-known local brands.

In mid-2019 an investigation by the Tuổi Trẻ newspaper alleged that Asanzo imported finished Chinese appliances, removed the 'Made in China' labels and affixed Vietnamese ones, marketing the result as domestically made. Asanzo's chairman, Phạm Văn Tam, denied stripping and relabelling goods, but acknowledged that roughly 70% of the components in its televisions — the circuit board, panel and screen — were imported from China.

The disclosure paralysed the business. Retailers and partners pulled back, the sales network froze, and Asanzo said it was losing about one billion dong a day while it waited for the official inspection to conclude. On 30 August 2019 it announced it was suspending production and closing its factory, having run up losses of about 70 billion dong. The brand that had been built on being Vietnamese could not survive the claim being tested.