From an uneducated boy to the owner of the brand "Shin Coffee"

In 1993, Nguyen Huu Long, 11 years old, had just finished 2nd grade when he had to drop out of school to follow his family from the poor countryside of Ky Anh (Ha Tinh) to Ia Cham Coffee Farm (in Chu Pah district, Gia Lai at that time) to earn a living. He toiled all day digging holes, pruning branches, harvesting... but the hard work could not extinguish the boy's dream. Although he could not imagine how, he still dreamed of one day becoming rich from coffee trees...

In 1999, Long went to Ho Chi Minh City to work as a waitress at a cafe and then as a waiter at a restaurant. He thought he would be stuck in these jobs until suddenly a chance came: a Japanese man who often visited the cafe, saw that Long looked like his son, so he asked to get to know him. Knowing Long's situation, he adopted him, gave him money to go to school and taught him Japanese. After finishing high school, his Japanese was quite good, and Long was hired as an interpreter.

With a small amount of capital, the dream of starting a coffee business suddenly arose. Long invited a friend to buy roasted and ground coffee and sell it to wholesalers. He recalled: “Failure was inevitable because we had no knowledge of branding or the skills needed to do business. However, this shock helped me realize that to be successful in business, I could not do it on instinct but had to have knowledge. So I took the entrance exam to the Faculty of Business Administration, Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics . After graduating, thinking that I had “grown up”, I invited a friend to join me in opening a bonsai coffee shop. Unexpectedly, I failed again. The reason was simply because the two members had too different perceptions. Not only did I lose all my capital, I also lost the small house that I had worked hard to earn. With no other way, I had to find a way to export labor to Japan with the determination to earn money to rebuild from scratch.”

Nguyen Huu Long - owner of the brand "Shin coffee".

Working for Toyota Company with a good salary, thinking that he would feel secure with his new job, as if by fate, the idea of doing coffee business once again came to Nguyen Huu Long. With the support and encouragement of his adoptive father, Long spent time attending organic agriculture training classes, and at the same time learned deeply about coffee samples in the world available in Japan. Japan is a large coffee consumption market; most of the world's famous coffee brands are present here. However, Vietnam, which is famous as a major coffee exporter in the world, is absent. His pride urged Long to study harder. "The job was so attractive that sometimes I tried to avoid work at the company to attend training courses and then work hard to make up for it later" - he recalled. His tireless learning spirit was recognized by a Japanese coffee import-export company and invited to become a manager. The experiences accumulated here further motivated Long to build his own coffee brand, aspiring to bring Vietnamese coffee far and wide across the ocean.

In 2015, with great ambitions, Long returned to his country and started his third business. Building a raw material area - a condition for quality control and brand building - was a priority for Long. Trang Commune was one of the 7 raw material areas he chose with an initial coffee area of 50 hectares. After establishing the cooperative, the area increased to 100 hectares. Long used the name "Shin" of his adoptive father as a brand to show his gratitude.

I eagerly followed Long to visit VCSC’s coffee garden. A completely new concept compared to what I had seen before. While traditional coffee gardens are always cleared of weeds; coffee trees are kept at a height of about 1.7 m, VCSC’s coffee has no height limit. Overall, it is a green carpet of symbiosis between coffee, shade trees and weeds.

Nguyen Huu Long said that the coffee garden does not use any chemical fertilizers but only homemade organic fertilizers, including cow manure, coffee husks and microbial fertilizers. The pesticides are also homemade biological pesticides extracted from fish fat. The entire production process is closed from the seed stage to the final product.

This is a farming principle that all members must strictly follow. “It is quite difficult to force them to follow the new farming principle,” Long said. “It is not so difficult that members cannot follow it. The main thing is that traditional farming habits make them uneasy about following the new one.

For example, they always wonder: why don't we clean up the weeds, what if they take all the food from the coffee plants?; why do we have to harvest 100% of the ripe fruit, when up to now, only 70-80% is considered high? It took me a long time to explain, but the important thing is that the unexpected efficiency made them "convinced": coffee yield reached 6 tons of beans/ha (normally only 3-4 tons); the products purchased by the cooperative are 15-20% higher than the market price".

These core benefits have made members gradually understand that changing farming habits means changing the quality of their lives and voluntarily implementing farming discipline – including 5 Ba Na ethnic members. Thanks to that, VCSC's coffee garden has achieved European (ORGANIC.EU) and American (ORGANIC.USDA) organic certifications granted by the Control Union organization.

Now I understand why at Shin Coffee stores in Ho Chi Minh City, each cup of coffee is sold for 80,000 - 150,000 VND. And now with 20 product lines processed by Shin's own factory, the Shin Coffee brand is present in Japan, the US and most European countries. Shin's reputation and prospects have been decided to be invested in by PAN - a large economic group. Shin Coffee has been chosen by PAN as a gift for heads of state at important conferences and events during Vietnam's ASEAN Chairmanship Year 2020.

“With its reputation and position in the market, why doesn’t Shin expand its production scale or cooperate more widely with Central Highlands coffee growers?”, Nguyen Huu Long shared in response to my question: with a demand of about 10,000 tons of organic coffee (currently only reaching 5,000 tons) for processing, Shin really needs to expand production and cooperate. However, VCSC’s motto is “essence, not quantity”. Changing a production habit takes time. So for now, VCSC only wants to be a “small flame” to spread a production method that is in harmony with the environment; aiming to build a carbon-reducing farming community and be able to sell credits to the world market.

As the founder of VCSC, Nguyen Huu Long holds the position of advisor, not director or chairman of the board of directors. Explaining this, Long said: “Simply, I want to give opportunities to young people. Moreover, when joining PAN, Shin Coffee faces many opportunities but also many challenges. This requires youthful energy. After all, I am already 42 years old…”.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/kinh-te/202506/tu-cau-be-that-hoctro-thanh-ong-chuthuong-hieu-shin-coffee-52e03b8/