Vu Thi Kim Hoa, an enterprising yet physically challenged woman, built her thriving knitting business from scratch and has provided jobs, vocational training, and opportunities for some hundred disabled locals.

Hoa, 50, owns Truc Quynh Co., one of the largest wool knitting businesses in Da Lat in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong.

However, Hoa has come a long, painful way to gain success and help less fortunate people. Hoa was struck with polio when she was three years old. After getting better, she had to practice walking and still walks with a limp.

Apart from going to school, all Hoa could do was to learn how to knit wool from her mother. After graduating from high school, with poor health and weighing only 38 kg, she decided that knitting would be her lifelong career and livelihood.

Since then, she has completely committed herself to the craft and taught herself advanced knitting and weaving techniques. Inspired by a childhood dream, she invented a wool design reminiscent of sea waves, which later became a hit on the local and foreign markets.

In early 2005, following a chance meeting with a group of disabled locals, Hoa decided to employ five of them. Starting with an initial capital of only VND200,000 (US$10), enough money to make 10 sweaters, she founded her Huu Hoa Cooperative two years later.  

Thirty disabled workers crowded into her 20m2 workshop. With only two spinning machines available, the workers took turns using them while the others spun the wool manually.

Hoa sold her own products at markets, sidewalk stalls, and tourism complexes in Da Lat and Ho Chi Minh City. Most people were reluctant to buy them as they doubted the quality of products made by physically challenged people. She patiently persuaded them, guaranteeing a compensation of three times their value if her products failed to impress.

Hoa once tried to sell her sweaters at the Phuoc Linh stall in An Dong Market in HCMC’s District 5, but the salespeople refused to buy them. Undaunted, she waited patiently for two hours until the owner appeared. After carefully inspecting her products, he purchased 30 of them. He is still one of her regular clients.

However, Hoa is no stranger to failure. According to Ngo Thi Hoang Anh, who has worked at Hoa’s workshop since her early days, to cut costs, Hoa once purchased a large amount of wool from an unknown origin that turned out to be of poor quality and unusable. Hoa then had to borrow from several people to complete her order of 60,000 products. After working hard to fill the order, she discovered her customer had vanished without a trace, leaving her with heavy debts.

In mid 2009, an unexpected bulk order from Cambodia began Hoa’s attempts to enter the foreign market. She diversified her products with both manually and mechanically made knits, and offered a considerably wider variety of products including knitwear, woolen hats, slippers, toys, and small gifts.

Her products were exported in larger numbers to the US, Japan and East European countries. Truc Quynh Co. was thus established.

Learning from the failure of several local knitting companies due to excessive attention to exports and neglect of the domestic sector, Hoa always makes sure that her company focuses equally on both foreign and local markets.

The innovative businesswoman has never stopped improving the quality and design of her products as well as her employees’ skills to boost production and combat rampant design theft and fake products.

Her company has now created several exclusive designs and is getting ready to export 200,000 products made from sheep wool to Spain before launching them in Vietnam.

Hoa’s Truc Quynh Co. now employs more than 700 workers, nearly 100 of whom have disabilities. She has opened dozens of workshops in Da Lat and other provinces.

“At 50, I still have to practice walking constantly, both literally and in my business. There’re times when I really want to slow down and retire, but I have to keep trying so I don’t let my employees down,” Hoa shared.

Despite her own difficulties, since her early days, Hoa has offered free training and provided jobs to local women and elderly people at vocational centers. She’s always willing to donate her sweaters to needy people and frontier soldiers and give money to local nursing homes and orphanages.

In mid 2011, 20 of Hoa’s workers finished a 320m2 wool blanket they had been working on for four years. The blanket was displayed at an Agent Orange exhibit in Hanoi in 2012 and was later auctioned in HCMC to raise funds for Agent Orange victims across the country.