“I always thought that it was not necessary to be a woman to knit, so I started to engage in knitting and produce products such as rice trays, bags, warm bags …”.

Those are the sharings of Mr. Nguyen Van Phung (residing in Chuong My, Hanoi). Born and raised in a bamboo and rattan craft village, he understands the hardships of his parents, knitting goods in the morning, afternoon, and evening is just enough to feed his children.

“But gradually, the modern society, the handicrafts of the craft village gradually disappeared. People gradually forgot about traditional jobs, and manual jobs, and replaced them with jobs using machines.

Therefore, I always thought I had to do something to keep the traditional crafts and crafts closer to everyone. So I decided to study and follow the knitting profession of my family and village,” he shared.

Mr. Phung wants to continue the family’s traditional profession.

He also makes his own products to sell to the market.

In the past, he also dreamed of having a job or a job, so he studied and graduated in a field that he loved. After graduating from school, he worked close to home for about a year.

“My family is still doing knitting accessories from rattan, bamboo, and goot… so I try to sell online to earn extra money for my family. From selling goods, I started to learn how to knit to help my parents in my spare time,” he shared.

At first, he said that he sold mainly online, approaching domestic customers. For a while, he expanded the market, selling to wholesale customers and exporting to China.

Because this item is handmade, the price is quite high, so it is also picky. The price of each product ranges from several tens to millions of VND/product. Sales volume is also precarious, unstable, each month he sells from a few hundred to several thousand products to the market.($1=24,000 VND)

He said these products are quite picky.

The reason these handmade products are expensive because it takes a lot of time to make, some products take a few days, even a month to complete, the price of raw materials changes every day. If you calculate the expenses, the labor is not high.

Not to mention, this job is not easy either. In addition to the love of the job, the worker needs to bear the pain of the hand, persevere and be very meticulous. The raw materials for making these products are rattan and rattan fibers, so it is easy to cut hands if people are not careful. And not everyone can do this job, there are products that must be made by longtime artisans.

He now sells to retail and wholesale customers and exports to China.

Every month he sells from a few hundred to several thousand products.

To make the product, he said that he needed to go through a number of stages such as choosing materials, the right size for the model he was planning to make, preparing the necessary tools for knitting, and when finished, he would use glue. goods to harden. When the product is finished, the worker needs to take the log to make the goods straight and flat, then take it to be treated against mold and termites. After that, it must be smoked to color and sun-dried to dry the glue, finally trimming the excess yarn ends and packing to send.

According to him, those are mass samples, there are also models with high technical requirements that need to go through many other stages.

In the future, he plans to expand the workshop if his products reach more customers.

Photo: Internet (Vietnamese.Quest.net)