Lollypop has been the leading design agency in India, the UAE and the USA for a long time. With a mindset of constant innovation and development, we decided to expand to the APAC region in 2020 with Vietnam as our target market.
After two years of operation in Vietnam, Lollypop Design Studio has steadily cultivated a group of exceptional UI/UX designers and made noteworthy progress. We officially opened the first UX Lab in Vietnam on November 2nd, 2022, marking a significant development for our expansion in this region.
As 2023 arrives, let’s give a brief on how we wrapped up 2022! We’ll explain the motivations for Lollypop‘s choice to grow in Vietnam, as well as the lessons we’ve discovered along the way in this blog!
As previously stated, our goal for 2020 was to build our company in the APAC region, which is home to 60% of the world’s population and has a rapidly expanding digital market. The process of selecting a target market is challenging since there are so many potential markets to choose from, including Singapore, Japan, and Korea. But given that UX/UI Design is still a young business in Vietnam with room to expand, as opposed to other mature economies in the APAC area, we ultimately chose Vietnam.
We’ve also onboarded excellent designers in this industry that have the potential to contribute to the expansion of our company. Junior-level employees may lack some industry knowledge, but they are quick learners with excellent Design-thinking attitudes and powerful problem-solving abilities.
It has not been the easiest task for us to grow a brand-new Lollypop team in Vietnam in the past 2 years. With a great amount of perseverance and formulating the right strategies, we’ve learned some valuable lessons that have helped us grow our team in Vietnam and create brand awareness here. Let’s explore!
With the ability to operate in several areas, we are aware of the importance of hiring the appropriate individuals to support our company’s sustainable growth. We constantly review the portfolios of candidates and have interviews to find out more about how they approach design challenges. We are always on the lookout for people with critical thinking and problem-solving skills during this employment term.
Furthermore, Lollypop‘s outsourced projects necessitate collaboration among designers. They must listen to end users to discover their pain spots and provide relevant design solutions. Therefore, candidates with excessive ego and personal feelings would be unsuitable. Until now, we are really delighted to have successfully built a solid UX/UI Design team in Vietnam.
Corporate culture is what will motivate and retain employees in the long term. Despite being the leading design agency, we keep in mind that each country has its own culture. That’s why, rather than applying the same Lollypop culture in India or America in this new region, we’ve worked hard to align the culture of Lollypop here with the Vietnamese culture. Our Vietnamese corporate culture is definitely reflected in the way we work and the cohesion among us.At work, we encourage a culture of curiosity, in which everyone is encouraged to speak out when encountering a problem. In such cases, other members are willing to hang on for a while to help solve the problem. This culture ensures our work progress as members hardly ever get stuck in any specific issue for a long time. As we work together on projects, it also creates a higher level of trust among members and a sense of belonging.In addition, we believe that the uniqueness of Lollypop Vietnam is the special tie between members of the design team over the last two years. Designers often gather around together after work to play music or sports. These activities not only relieve tension but also enhance our bonds. Furthermore, the folks truly care about each other’s mental health. Members are willing to spend time sharing and discussing their problems with one another and collectively looking for ways to solve the arising issues.
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After successfully building a strong team, we decided to promote the team’s ability as well as our corporate culture externally. We implemented a strategy to curate and publish content relevant to our culture, everyday activities and unique traits of our employees on social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
One of the digital formats that we recently utilized to build larger followings is the infamous reels. According to Social Media Insider, The average reach rate for Reels is 20.59%, which varies based on the size of your audience. They are viewable to non-followers and appear on the home feed, explore section, and are present practically everywhere on Instagram. Reels are consequently on the approach of surpassing other social media formats in terms of reach owing to how engaged consumers are while viewing them!
Furthermore, because our workers appreciate the work atmosphere that we’ve established here, several of them have suggested working at Lollypop – A Design Agency Vietnam to their friends and families who are seeking jobs. This enables us to recognize the positive impact of a good company culture and rely on word-of-mouth marketing for the hiring process.
Last but not least, we strongly believe that sharing our industry vision and knowledge with others can lead to greater success. Therefore, the Lollypop team proactively networks with like-minded leaders in order to share their knowledge from practical experiences for mutual advantage.
As a prominent example, Lollypop recently had the opportunity to collaborate with ADPlist Community in a sharing event in Ho Chi Minh City. It should be noted that ADPlist is a leading platform where you can find and meet mentors from all over the world. Together, we co-hosted the first event of ADPlist in Vietnam, where UX is still a new industry. UX roles in most businesses are still unspecialized. It is typical for designers with UI expertise to also handle UX work. In some traditional business models, Designers work in the Marketing division and are responsible for creating a variety of materials, including branding, advertisements, and even videos.
The ADPlist event provided UX professionals and designers with a wonderful opportunity to network and talk about ways to improve User Experience (UX) in Digital Transformation (DX). Everyone engaged in a spirited discussion about the main topic and didn’t hesitate to ask questions in order to gain new insights and approaches to improving UX in digital products.
Lollypop in Vietnam has seen numerous obstacles, but also several incredible accomplishments over the last two years. The road ahead will always be challenging, and we know that in order to sustain, our representatives must continually nurture fresh information and trends to provide greater practical value to clients. With a solid foundation in place, we are confident in Lollypop Vietnam‘s long-term growth and success in the future.
We’ve advanced to 2023, with a bigger vision and a mission to touch billions of people in the Asia-Pacific area. We’re really proud of our success story in Vietnam, and we can’t wait to see what this new year has in store for us and add more chapters in our tale here!
