that any print, embroidery, tag, zipper, fabric, even the thread for sewing is perfect.
How much do you estimate you lose in terms of sales because of these copied T-shirts? BG: We cannot count how much exactly the loss is, but it influences our sales somehow.
Locally-based T-shirt company Papaya sells similar designs as yours (with the electric wires, graphic novel images, etc) and they opened a year after you. Thoughts? BG: Same same but different. You know this famous phrase? When we created our company six years ago, and even after one year, we were the only one in Saigon with this concept. Today there are a few other companies that do the same thing. Clients now have more choices, and I prefer to let them have their own thoughts on them. From our side, I still have to say that we are different. Different in our strategy, different in our designs and graphic style, different in our image. Really different in many ways.
Are your designs trademarked? Can you explain the process? BG: Yes they are. We trademark all of our designs under the trademark legal representative office of the Vietnamese government.
It's quite simple, we send our designs to the representative office in Hanoi, we pay the amount for the copyright process, and we receive an official document that proves our designs are copyrighted. It takes one year though to be really protected and to be able to start any legal action. I think it's really good that nowadays Vietnamese people are required to respect these obligations. It will force them to be more creative.
How often do you come out with new designs? BG: We have new stuff almost monthly. We are not a fashion company, so the collections don’t go by season. But we catch the trend on the colors, the cutting style of the fashion world, and have a collection of designs that go with them. We are a team of creative people, so the designs may go out right when we have an idea. Like now I'm talking to you, and if this special flower in front of us gave me an emotion and an idea for a T-shirt, tomorrow I can call you and say: ‘Thanks Christine, Ginkgo just got a new design collection of Vietnamese flowers.’
You recently opened up the Ginkgo Concept Store. How is this shop different from the T-shirt one? BG: Ginkgo T-shirt store sells only Ginkgo
products. In the Ginkgo Concept Store you will find other brands and designers from all over Vietnam. It was created in order to propose to our customers a shopping space where they can find high quality and creative products only made in Vietnam.
Your ethos is organic and sustainable products with fair trade in mind. How do you maintain this in Vietnam? Where do you source your materials and products? Is everything made in Vietnam? BG: One of our main objectives with the company is to create as many jobs as possible and bring a cool and safe working environment as well as a fair salary to all of our employees. And with everyone, we try to share frankly our ideas for the same objective: to develop together with Ginkgo. Ginkgo’s products are made in Vietnam, in our factory in Saigon. You are welcome to visit us anytime. Most of our materials are produced in Vietnam by the local factories that have been our providers since the first day. We're trying to use local materials as much as possible. But when it's not available in Vietnam, we need to import, like organic cotton. Organic cotton is one of our proudest products. It has been quite difficult to import and we are the first local T-shirt company to offer a great collection with this fabric. For more info, visit www.ginkgo-vietnam. com.
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