Tough competition threatens solid position of Eurowindow in plastic door market

In early 2000s, when plastic door was still considered as a relatively new concept in Vietnam as people mostly used timber doors or aluminum doors, Nguyen Canh Son had seized the market opportunity and established Eurowindow to provide the door market in Vietnam with more choices and solutions.

Since 2007, the door production business of Son has officially been operated under the trading name of Eurowindow JSC after being invested by the Private Equity New Markets (PENM), which offered equity capital and strategic partnership to Vietnamese companies.

Being the pioneer in this market, Eurowindow JSC was greatly benefited once the plastic doors with reinforced steel became popular. By 2008, Eurowindow JSC had gained $20.4 million in revenue. 

In the same year, the company suffered severely from the financial crisis in 2008 and the freeze in real estate market, same as many other enterprises. Eurowindow was only able to regain its position in these recent years.

In particular, Eurowindow JSC gained roundly $79 million in revenue in 2016, an increase of 60 per cent compared to the previous year and earned a profit of over $5.5 million, a growth of 47 per cent compared to the year before.

In 2016, when Eurowindow’s business was just thriving, PENM decided to sell 30 per cent stake at Eurowindow to Bunka Shutter, a Japanese enterprise also specialized in door production.

After cooperating with its Japanese partner, Eurowindow reported a revenue of roundly $140 million in 2017 and aimed to earn over $194 million in 2018. So far in the first half of this year, Eurowindow had gained over $56.2 million in revenue.

Additionally, thanks to the prosperity of the condo market and increasing trend of using plastic doors, the prospect of the plastic door market is fairly optimistic. It is forecasted that plastic doors will account for 35 per cent of doors in every house, creating a higher demand for 15 million square metres of plastic doors annually.

After 15 years of operation, Eurowindow occupies the majority of shares in the doors market, especially with its wide range of products including aluminum doors, glass doors, timber doors, fire resisting timber doors, automatic and rolling doors, etc.

Furthermore, Eurowindow has a widespread distribution network with five factories and 40 showrooms across the countries. Eurowindow’s business becomes even more successful after the company becomes the supplier for a series of national projects such as the National Assembly, the Government office, headquarter of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security and Can Tho International Airport.

Despite the optimistic appraisal, the growth rate of Eurowindow is still likely to be influenced by the fierce competition of the material and glass doors market in the recent years, especially with the appearance of other competitors with foreign import doors such as Dong Tam Window, EBM Window, Smartwindow, etc.

It is also anticipated that 2018 will be an unfavourably year for the glass industry due to the oversupply from the CFG glass factory in Ninh Binh since it comes into operation with a production capacity of 1,200 tons of glass per day, while at present the total production capacity of four domestic glass factories is just about 2,200 tons per day.