WHAT HAPPENED
The 22nd Vietnam Craft Village Fair, a national craft fair, will take place in Hanoi from October 8 to 12, 2026, as announced by the organizers at a press conference on September 30. The event is expected to feature nearly 100 booths and representatives from more than 50 organizations across 18 provinces and cities, according to VnEconomy.
The key difference this year is not the scale but the focus: the fair's program includes e-commerce activities and promotion of OCOP products—the national "One Commune One Product" program. Vietnam News describes the event as an attempt to link craft production with rural tourism and digital sales channels, rather than just a souvenir exhibition and sale.
The digital component is not only government-driven. Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam is expanding its digital commerce support program for Hanoi's craft villages for the fourth consecutive year: offline and online training in e-commerce, livestream selling, and AI-generated content, writes VnEconomy. So the model of "state platform plus private training operator" is no longer a pilot here but an annual routine.
WHAT IT MEANS
For a Russian seller, this is primarily a signal of supplier maturity, not a new exotic product. The Vietnamese craft village is ceasing to be a "workshop in the backwoods" and becoming a participant in the digital supply chain: it has a storefront, a trained person at a laptop, and increasingly, access to marketplaces. According to VnEconomy, the combined GMV of Vietnam's four largest platforms—Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, and Tiki—is estimated at $10–11.1 billion; this is the volume within which craft goods are already learning to compete with mass production.
The second point is the scale of supply. According to VietnamPlus, there are more than 1,350 craft villages and traditional craft hamlets in and around Hanoi alone. The fair, with its 100 booths, is a showcase, not the entire market. For a buyer, this means there is a long tail of producers beyond the exhibition hall who can be found directly, bypassing intermediaries.
The third point is the barriers that have not yet been removed. An analytical piece by Vietnam News dated August 5, 2026, explicitly names the weak spots: fragmented production, poor internal coordination, and uneven internet infrastructure. The proposed solutions include a unified digital brand for craft villages, QR traceability, and a "digital craft village space" with virtual shops and production videos. For now, this is more of a plan than a reality, and it is precisely in this gap that the window of opportunity lies for those willing to work with a supplier hands-on rather than through a ready-made catalog.
The fourth point is the money that the government and development institutions are willing to invest. According to a VCCI document (January 2026), this includes covering 100% of travel and accommodation expenses for participants in trips to raw material regions and subsidizing 50% of the cost of new equipment for rural production facilities, with a cap of 500 million dong per entity. This is not direct money for the Russian buyer, but it explains why a Vietnamese supplier today can upgrade equipment and meet export standards faster than three years ago.
VIETSMART EXPERT COMMENTARY
I regularly visit craft villages outside Hanoi and see the same picture: the product is excellent, the packaging is not. A craftsman makes beautiful ceramics or woven items but doesn't understand that a marketplace requires weight, dimensions, a barcode, and a stable batch of at least 500 units. Our partners most often stumble on one thing: they go to the fair, fall in love with a sample, and sign a contract without checking whether the village can reproduce that sample three months later without losing color or size. So my advice is simple: the fair is a place for introductions, not for purchasing. Purchasing begins afterward, at the factory, with a trial batch.
CONCLUSIONS AND WHAT TO DO
- Request the list of participants by category (ceramics, textiles, bamboo, lacquer) from the fair organizers and shortlist 10–15 villages for your assortment—contacts are published after the September 30, 2026 press conference.
- Order a trial batch of 50–100 units before signing an annual contract: check color, size, and weight consistency, because that is where marketplace unit economics break down.
- Verify the supplier's OCOP status: products with this certification are already connected to Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and Postmart.vn, according to VIB / Vietnam Business Forum, which means the seller has experience shipping and packaging for e-commerce.
- Check whether the supplier has participated in the Coca-Cola Beverages Vietnam digital commerce program: if so, they already have a trained employee for livestream and content—this reduces your marketing costs on the Russian side.
- Include QR traceability in the contract if the supplier is ready: this is not only a requirement of Russian marketplaces for product origin but also your bargaining chip in price negotiations with buyers.
Source: VnEconomy EN — Business, September 30, 2026