Nguyen Thi Khuyen, from Yen Binh district’s Yen Binh town, started her stone powder business when she was 31 years old. Four years later, the woman switched to a new business field: making unbaked coloured roof tiles and became the director of the Nasaki Vietnam Limited Company.  

Khuyen said she recognised an abundant source of construction materials in Yen Bai which inspired her to build a plant manufacturing environmentally-friendly roof tiles.

"To translate my idea into reality, I studied materials, hired experts and learnt from foreign technologies, then changed them to suit Vietnam’s weather conditions,” she said.

With her unceasing efforts and creativity, Khuyen was bestowed upon with a certificate of merit for her excellent startup by the Vietnam Youth Federation’s Central Committee, while her Nasaki colored tile products were among the top 20 business projects of the Vietnam Women's Union Central Committee.

With the hope of preserving valuable tea trees, in 2007, Lam Thi Kim Thoa and her coworkers established the Suoi Giang cooperative, the first to buy raw tea buds from Mong ethnic minority people to produce finished products.

Thoa said it is hard to build a trademark accepted by the market but it is more difficult to firmly maintain it. "That is why we requested our cooperative members follow safe production process for clean and healthy products,” she stated.

Suoi Giang tea products has been accredited as an exclusive trademark and meeting organic standards by the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam and ECOCERT of Europe, respectively.

Khuyen and Thoa are among many successful women, whose businesses are accounting for more than 20 percent of the total firms operating in Yen Bai. Last year, overcoming myriad difficulties, their companies reeled in 1.5 trillion VND (65.5 million USD) in revenue, contributed 11 billion VND to the national budget, and created nearly 1,900 jobs./.