Mumuso origin scandal deepens

Targeting Vietnamese consumers who like foreign brands at reasonable prices, Korea-based Mumuso and Japan-based Miniso over the past few years have been developing strongly in Vietnam, despite selling Chinese goods.

Chinese goods under Korean and Japanese labels

The website of Mumuso Vietnam

Lately, Korean television MBC has informed that Mumuso is entirely Chinese and only assumes Korean origins to cheat customers. Accordingly, the television’s reporters did a feature related the issue at a Mumuso store in Ho Chi Minh City.

Many Vietnamese customers are quite interested in Mumuso’s goods due to their beautiful Korean designs and reasonable prices. However, according to MBC’s reporters, Mumuso goods only imitate popular Korean brands’ designs.

The reporters also referred to an Korean expert to prove that the Korean inscriptions on Mumuso goods are meaningless. According to MBC's feature, Vietnamese people buying fake and low-quality products from Mumuso could have a negative impact on Korean brands.

The team of reporters also visited Mumuso’s office in Korea, which is written on Mumuso’s products, but the people living at the address refused to answer questions, saying they know nothing about Mumuso. This strongly suggests that the address on Mumuso products is fake.

Mumuso products are supposed to fake Korean popular brands

Lately, Mumuso Vietnam Co., Ltd., which imports and exports the firm’s goods, on May 11 organised a media conference in Ho Chi Minh City to clarify the issue of Chinese origins.

Accordingly, Nham Phi Khanh, director of Mumuso Vietnam, said that Mumuso is a registered trademark at the South Korea Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) since 2014 and holds a business licence. Thus, the operations of Mumuso in South Korea are absolutely legal.

However, MBC also quoted Park Jong Pil, deputy direct of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO): “Mumuso established a company in Korea, but we cannot confirm its business in the country.”

Not only Mumuso, but many other retail brands, including Miniso and Daiso were caught up in similar scandals.

In particular, despite describing itself as a Japanese retailer giant, Miniso only has four stores in Japan, but 1,100 stores in China.

Miniso and Mumuso flogging Chinese goods in Vietnam?

How could Miniso and Mumuso develop strongly over the past few years, especially Miniso which increased its revenue from $770 million in 2015 to $1.5 billion in 2016?

trithuctre.vn stated that directly shipping goods from the factory to stores via as few intermediaries as possible is the most standard distribution process, which helps to save on each product, which adds up to huge profits.

In addition, Miniso and Mumuso also do business under franchise forms, which helps them expand the business more rapidly.

Finally, high gross margin is the key to help the firm earn money. All goods in the firms’ stores produce small profit, but selling a large number of products (about 10,000 products per day) helps Miniso and Mumuso make bank.