Craft villages entering the larger market: maintain or change

A Hue conical hat, a Van Phuc silk piece, a Bat Trang ceramic vase: when they remain in the village, they are heritage. When they enter the larger market, especially the international market or the high-end domestic segment, they must become brands. These are two different tasks that require two different types of thinking. Most craft villages and artisans are stuck in between: not traditional enough to satisfy those seeking pure heritage, and not modern enough to be included in the shopping carts of urban consumers or foreign customers.

The wrong question leads to wrong decisions

Much of the debate about craft villages entering the market is framed with the wrong question. "Preserve tradition or renew?" is the wrong question because it forces people to choose one extreme. The right question is: among all that makes this product, what is the soul that cannot be lost, and what is merely a form that can adapt to the market?

Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap, defines a brand as the "gut feeling" of customers, not the logo or packaging. Applied to craft villages: the soul of a craft brand lies in the technique, origin, and the story of its creator. Packaging, colors, and presentation are the parts that can and should adapt as the market changes.

Confusing these two things is the root cause of most wrong decisions: either keeping everything the same out of fear of losing roots, or changing everything to appear "modern," both leading to invisibility.

Invisible in two directions

Artisans and craft villages can become invisible in two opposing ways.

The first approach: change nothing. The product is beautiful, with high craftsmanship, but there is no story told in the language of the target market, no strong identity image to catch the eye of online browsers, and no distribution system beyond traditional markets or a few craft fairs. Customers may appreciate the heritage, but they do not know where to find it, how much to pay, or have enough information to trust.

The second approach: change everything to look like industrial goods. Minimalist Korean-style packaging, English brand names, stark studio images. The product loses exactly what makes it worth buying: the story, the traces of humanity, the feeling of something that cannot be replicated by machines. Customers scroll past because it looks like any other brand, but it is not as cheap as industrial goods and not as special as true heritage products.

A brand is behavior, not just a coat of paint. Products, environments, communication, and behavior must be consistent with each other to build trust.

Wally Olins, On Brand

The boundary between essence and form

To escape the deadlock, it is necessary to clearly separate the two layers in any handcrafted product.

The layer of soul, uncompromising, includes: techniques and handcrafted processes, local or traditional materials that define the product's characteristics, the story of its origins and the people who create it, and the elements that create irreplaceable uniqueness.

The layer of form, which can and should adapt, includes: storytelling language tailored to each market, packaging and presentation suitable for distribution channels, pricing and product packaging strategies, and communication methods with customers.

Jean-Noël Kapferer, the author of the brand identity prism theory, notes that physique, or physical appearance, is just one of the six facets that make up identity. The other facets are personality, culture, relationship with customers, reflected image, and self-image. Craft villages often only think about physique when discussing renewal, neglecting the other five facets where true heritage is preserved.

Lessons from brands that have succeeded

There is no need to look abroad for examples. Cocoon, a purely Vietnamese cosmetics brand, builds its entire story on local ingredients: Ben Tre coconut oil, Dak Lak coffee, Dak Lak avocado, and Quang Nam tea tree. This is not merely a marketing strategy but a decision to build identity from an unreplicable origin. As a result, Cocoon's sheet masks hold 95.1% market share in that product line within its segment (according to publicly cited internal market data). This principle fully applies to craftsmanship: a specific origin story, with place names, personal names, and processes, is something no competitor can replicate.

In the international fashion industry, brands like Aime Leon Dore, often abbreviated as ALD, do not sell clothes; they sell a worldview tied to the founder's perspective. Without that "world," the product is just fabric and thread. Artisans have a similar, even stronger advantage: their stories are real, not fabricated.

When should we call it rebranding

Not every change is a rebrand. And not every craft village or artisan needs to rebrand to enter the larger market. Sometimes what is needed first is a brand system, meaning building an identity system from scratch, not changing what already exists.

Rebranding is truly only necessary in one of the following situations: the target market changes to the extent that the old message can no longer reach them, the product has fundamentally changed but the identity remains old, or there is a significant event such as international expansion, entering high-end distribution channels, or collaborating with a large organization that requires a different level of professionalism.

Byron Sharp, in How Brands Grow, emphasizes that being easily recognizable is more important than being different. This means that if a craft village has some distinctive assets, such as colors, patterns, and characteristic presentations that customers recognize immediately, maintaining those elements and making them clearer will be more effective than replacing them with entirely new visual language.

What craft villages need to do first

Before hiring someone to design a logo or packaging, there are three questions that need honest answers, not just answers that sound good:

• Who are the actual target customers, and what are they buying for, not what you want them to buy for.
• Among all that makes this product, what is the element that cannot be replicated by machines or larger capital?
• Is the current distribution system and customer touchpoints conveying that story correctly, or are they contradicting it?

These three questions are not design questions. They are strategic questions. And the answers to them form the foundation for all subsequent decisions about form, from packaging to catalogues, from product photography to social media presentation.

Craft villages and artisans are not lacking in stories. They lack the system to deliver those stories to the right people, at the right time, in a language they understand. That is the role of the brand, not the product.

Positioning is not something you do with the product. It is something you do in the minds of potential customers.

Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind