{"id":3485,"date":"2025-06-26T16:29:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T09:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/\/uncategorized\/the-preserver-of-traditional-bricks\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T16:29:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T09:29:30","slug":"the-preserver-of-traditional-bricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/uncategorized\/the-preserver-of-traditional-bricks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Preserver of Traditional Bricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

One fine day, Mr. Dinh Hong Ky, CEO of Secoin Joint Stock Company, received an investment proposal from SCG \u2013 the largest building materials corporation in Thailand. Right from the start, SCG stated that they wanted to acquire 60% of Secoin’s charter capital. \u201cI outright rejected the offer, saying I had no intention of selling the company. We have always asserted that Secoin is a Vietnamese business and have built a strong Vietnamese brand,\u201d Mr. Ky shared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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After that, SCG Group acquired 85% of shares in Prime Group, another major Vietnamese building materials company, for 7.2 billion baht, equivalent to 5,000 billion VND. Meanwhile, Secoin continued to receive numerous offers to buy shares from investors in Japan, Australia…<\/p>\n

This comes as no surprise: while many domestic building materials companies were in sharp decline, Secoin consistently achieved annual revenue growth of 20\u201325%.<\/p>\n

Over 24 years of development, Secoin has grown to include 9 companies, 5 factories, 2 forest plantations, and more than 800 employees. Each milestone of Secoin is closely tied to the name of its \u201ccaptain\u201d \u2013 Dinh Hong Ky.<\/p>\n

The King of Non-Fired Bricks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Ky was born into a family of educators. His father, Associate Professor Dr. Dinh Xuan Ba, was once Vice President of the Vietnam Informatics Association and Head of the Department of Informatics at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.<\/p>\n

After retiring, in 1989, Dr. Ba founded Secoin. Upon graduating from the Department of Automatic Control at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, instead of following in his father\u2019s footsteps in education, Mr. Ky took over the family business.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, while people still widely used fired bricks to build homes, Mr. Ky imported a production line for non-fired bricks. As a result, Secoin\u2019s first products not only failed to sell but also could not find any agency for testing or quality assessment.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 1995, Mr. Ky and a group of journalists from Vietnam Television met with Dr. Tran Van Huynh, President of the Vietnam Association for Building Materials, to discuss developing the non-fired building materials industry in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Afterward, the team filmed Vietnam\u2019s first non-fired block brick production plant in Phu Ly \u2013 Ha Nam, which was equipped and supported by Secoin.<\/p>\n

Fifteen minutes after the program aired, Mr. Ky received a call from Mitsui Construction (Japan), who were building the five-star Horison Hotel (now Pullman Hanoi). According to the design, the building required concrete block bricks, but Mitsui couldn\u2019t find any in Hanoi or nearby areas. Mitsui became Secoin\u2019s first customer.<\/p>\n

Since then, Secoin\u2019s block bricks have been used in many projects across the country. Secoin has also supplied equipment and transferred technology to more than 30 non-fired block brick factories.<\/p>\n

As the pioneer and driving force behind the development of non-fired bricks in Vietnam, Mr. Ky has been dubbed the \u201cKing of Non-Fired Bricks\u201d within the industry.<\/p>\n

Besides introducing non-fired bricks to Vietnam, he also sought ways to bring traditional Vietnamese tiles\u2014encaustic cement tiles<\/strong>\u2014to international markets.<\/p>\n

The Preserver of Encaustic Cement Tiles<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1997\u20131998, during a trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. Ky saw that encaustic cement tiles were being sold at cheap prices, with poor quality and monotonous designs. Most of the traditional tile artisans had left the trade.<\/p>\n

In contrast, abroad, Mr. Ky noticed these products were considered high-end and rare due to their handcrafted nature\u2014something only the wealthy could afford.<\/p>\n

In the Netherlands, France, and Germany, these tiles were sold at nearly \u20ac100 per square meter. While many Vietnamese people preferred foreign products, Mr. Ky focused on exporting items that were underappreciated in the domestic market.<\/p>\n

He sought out former encaustic tile artisans while quickly establishing a factory in Binh Duong to produce high-quality, high-priced export products.<\/p>\n

However, at first, he faced fierce competition from China. Upon investigation, he discovered that China\u2019s products were cheaper because of large-scale production.<\/p>\n

To compete, there was no other way\u2014Secoin had to scale up and improve quality using technology from Switzerland, Germany, and the U.S.<\/p>\n

Today, Secoin operates two encaustic tile factories in Binh Duong and Ho Chi Minh City. Exports account for 45% of Secoin\u2019s total output. By 2014, this figure was projected to rise to 60%.<\/p>\n

Even though the price of Secoin\u2019s encaustic tiles is now eight times higher than before and nearly double that of other domestic producers, international customers still buy them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur export order schedule is fully booked until January 2014,\u201d Mr. Ky shared. Currently, 95% of Secoin\u2019s encaustic tile output is exported to 41 countries.<\/p>\n

After countless business trips between countries and factories, Mr. Ky spends his spare time reading. \u201cMany people enjoy exercising their bodies, but I like to exercise my mind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s a technical person, many people know him as a writer. \u201cEven though I loved and was good at math, I was once selected to compete in Hanoi\u2019s city-level literature contests. Later, as an entrepreneur, I traveled extensively, met many people, and encountered many thoughts and concerns. I wanted to share those reflections with others, so I began to write,\u201d Mr. Ky said.<\/p>\n

L\u00ca DUNG\/NC\u0110T<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.doanhnhansaigon.vn\/chan-dung-doanh-nhan\/nguoi-bao-ton-vien-gach-truyen-thong\/1076625\/<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One fine day, Mr. Dinh Hong Ky, CEO of Secoin Joint Stock Company, received an investment proposal from SCG \u2013 the largest building materials corporation in Thailand. Right from the start, SCG stated that they wanted to acquire 60% of Secoin’s charter capital. \u201cI outright rejected the offer, saying I had no intention of selling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinhhongky.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}