For a long time, I thought joining the family business was something that would eventually happen to me—like grey hair or taxes.
My parents started Tuan Viet Shoes from a small rubber-outsole workshop in 1989. They came from a farming family, built the company largely through experience, instinct, and an extraordinary tolerance for things going wrong. By the early 2010s, my father already had another dream: after years of making shoes for international brands, why couldn’t we create a Vietnamese brand of our own?
That dream became tuvi’s.
I wish I could say I immediately understood the vision.
I didn’t.
I had studied abroad and spent years in international environments like the RMIT South Saigon Campus, where everything had a framework, a presentation, and preferably an Excel file. I came back to a factory full of people who could look at a piece of rubber, touch it for three seconds, and tell me something was wrong.
My degree was impressive right up until somebody asked me why a shoe was not bonding properly.
That gap created plenty of friction. I wanted systems, digitalization, branding, and new ways of working. The older generation often responded with the manufacturing equivalent of: “Interesting PowerPoint. Now come and see what actually happens on the line.”
Annoyingly, they were often right. But not always.
Over time, something changed. We stopped arguing about old versus new and started asking what each could contribute. Their craftsmanship met our systems. Their instincts met data. Experience met experimentation.
And somewhere during that process, my relationship with Tuan Viet changed too. It took me almost twenty years to understand that inheriting a family business was not primarily about inheritance. It was about opportunity.
Today, when I walk through the factory, I no longer see only machines, production lines, or pairs of boots. I see people, hundreds of livelihoods, accumulated knowledge, relationships built across decades—and the possibility of creating something meaningful from all of it: bringing greater abundance to more people through decent work, made possible by many decent people working together.
My ambition for tuvi’s is therefore bigger than selling footwear. I want to prove that Vietnamese manufacturing can create not only products for other people’s brands, but also ideas, brands, and values of our own. And perhaps the biggest twist is this: I spent years wondering whether I had to continue my father's journey.
Eventually, I realized I wanted to.
My parents started Tuan Viet Shoes from a small rubber-outsole workshop in 1989. They came from a farming family, built the company largely through experience, instinct, and an extraordinary tolerance for things going wrong. By the early 2010s, my father already had another dream: after years of making shoes for international brands, why couldn’t we create a Vietnamese brand of our own?
That dream became tuvi’s.
I wish I could say I immediately understood the vision.
I didn’t.
I had studied abroad and spent years in international environments like the RMIT South Saigon Campus, where everything had a framework, a presentation, and preferably an Excel file. I came back to a factory full of people who could look at a piece of rubber, touch it for three seconds, and tell me something was wrong.
My degree was impressive right up until somebody asked me why a shoe was not bonding properly.
That gap created plenty of friction. I wanted systems, digitalization, branding, and new ways of working. The older generation often responded with the manufacturing equivalent of: “Interesting PowerPoint. Now come and see what actually happens on the line.”
Annoyingly, they were often right. But not always.
Over time, something changed. We stopped arguing about old versus new and started asking what each could contribute. Their craftsmanship met our systems. Their instincts met data. Experience met experimentation.
And somewhere during that process, my relationship with Tuan Viet changed too. It took me almost twenty years to understand that inheriting a family business was not primarily about inheritance. It was about opportunity.
Today, when I walk through the factory, I no longer see only machines, production lines, or pairs of boots. I see people, hundreds of livelihoods, accumulated knowledge, relationships built across decades—and the possibility of creating something meaningful from all of it: bringing greater abundance to more people through decent work, made possible by many decent people working together.
My ambition for tuvi’s is therefore bigger than selling footwear. I want to prove that Vietnamese manufacturing can create not only products for other people’s brands, but also ideas, brands, and values of our own. And perhaps the biggest twist is this: I spent years wondering whether I had to continue my father's journey.
Eventually, I realized I wanted to.
