9X decided to quit his high-paying job, return to his hometown and create a Tiktok channel about Da Lat agricultural products, attracting millions of likes.

Putting aside two excellent university degrees and more than 5 years of living in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Tuong Thao, 28 years old, decided to return to her hometown Lam Dong to stick with vegetables. Thao created a personal channel "Strange dishes from home garden" attracting 180,000 followers and 1.5 million likes on the Tiktok platform.

9X khởi nghiệp đưa nông sản Đà Lạt lên sàn Tiktok

Nguyen Thi Tuong Thao next to the vegetable garden of Dalat Home Garden Cooperative. (Photo: NVCC)

Love for vegetables

In her "million-view" videos on her personal Tiktok page, viewers often see the image of a petite girl with a smiling face in a faded shirt, boots and hat. Right in the middle of the garden, she introduces to viewers many unique agricultural products of the Dalat Garden Cooperative. People often call her "Thao Mola" - short for the Tiktok channel "Strange dishes from the home garden".

Thao's chance to become a farmer came from her family's tradition of farming. As a student, Thao used to sell vegetables and fruits sent by her family online to earn extra income to pay for her studies.

Having worked in the chemical testing department of a foreign company with a high salary, but with a passion for vegetables and fruits, plus the fact that after the Covid-19 pandemic, realizing that consumers are increasingly interested in clean, safe, and healthy agricultural products, Thao had an unexpected turning point.

"Currently, there are many types of vegetables and fruits on the market that are not clean and safe, not to mention the refrain 'good harvest, low price, good price, bad harvest' which significantly affects the quality and output of Vietnamese vegetables. Living in Da Lat - the capital of vegetables and fruits of the country, I always wonder how to increase the value of Vietnamese vegetables. Therefore, I decided to quit my job to return home to start a business", Thao shared.

In September 2022, Thao returned to her hometown Lam Dong and applied to work for the Dalat Garden Cooperative - which, according to Thao, was her way of gradually accessing clean agricultural products and learning about the process of growing and caring for vegetables and tubers to better understand.

Thao applied for a job packing vegetables. Standing in front of a young girl with two degrees in Chemical Engineering and Economics, Ms. Le Thi Yen Van - Director of Da Lat Garden Cooperative was really confused when she did not know what position to put her in so that it would be suitable and not "wasted". But Tuong Thao herself had positioned her own value.

Create breakthroughs, dare to think, dare to do

In the early days, Thao realized that although the cooperative was very large, with dozens of employees, growing hundreds of different types of vegetables, tubers, and fruits each year, the working process was still traditional and outdated. The cooperative had a website and a fanpage but did not take care of it, only updating a few very old photos.

Once, hearing Ms. Yen Van share her desire to build a healthy eating community, that is also what Thao is aiming for. So she volunteered to take on the job, creating innovations. "Because I think in the 4.0 era now, if we only maintain the current way of selling, the cooperative will definitely go backwards" - Thao said.

Tuong Thao started to take care of her fanpage and website, taking care of each photo. In particular, realizing the power of the social network specializing in short videos Tiktok, Thao came up with the idea of retailing agricultural products on this social network with many advantages.

Having been accustomed to selling traditional products through wholesalers, Ms. Yen Van was quite hesitant about Thao's innovation. However, not giving up, Thao created her own tiktok channel "Strange dishes from home garden", filmed, edited and uploaded videos herself with the aim of introducing many people to the unique agricultural products that the Dalat Garden Cooperative has.

Thao regularly introduces fresh and clean vegetables from the Dalat Garden Cooperative on the Tiktok channel "Strange dishes from home garden", attracting hundreds of thousands of views. (Photo: NVCC)

From videos introducing sweet palermo fruit peppers, South American passion fruit, rainbow carrots, chili peppers,... after less than 2 months of creating the channel, Tuong Thao had videos with over 4 million views. In particular, the video introducing the noodle squash with over 5 million views became an internet phenomenon. There were days when she received thousands of messages asking to buy this type of squash. The first time she opened the livestream feature to sell products, after only 15 minutes, Thao closed nearly 1,000 orders. Bringing the revenue from selling chili and other agricultural products that month to nearly 1 billion VND.

Sharing about the name of the "million view" channel, Thao said that she always struggled with naming the channel, how to convey the content she wanted. Finally, Thao decided to name it "Strange dishes from home garden", which both shows the uniqueness of the product and is friendly to everyone because when mentioning home, home garden, people often feel secure and familiar.

Thao also encountered many difficulties from the early days of building the idea when she had to figure out how to film and edit videos herself in a limited time. There were times when Thao seemed exhausted when she had to take on too many tasks from customer care, channel development, and controlling product operations. "The most depressing time was when orders were limited due to insufficient supply compared to expected sales or agricultural products not being harvested as expected," Thao recounted.

Thao's efforts have paid off when in 4 months of launching, "Strange dishes from home garden" has reached 17.5 million product views, with 20,000 orders and more than 22,000 products sold. The cooperative's revenue from retail channels Tiktok, zalo, and fanpage has increased vertically. This also helps Ms. Yen Van trust and support Thao's way of doing things more.

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