Plaque presented to Dynamic by Trung Nguyen in 2006
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
www.Trungnguyen.com.au
This webpage is the former internet distribution channel for Trung Nguyen Coffee.
Plaque presented to Dynamic by Trung Nguyen in 2006
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Dynamic Food Brokers, owner of this site have a new Vietnamese Coffee page
Highlands Coffees are now widely regarded as the premium coffee brand of Vietnam and dominate the big cities with their chain of stylish cafes and presence in most large retail outlets.
To visit Highlandscoffee.com.au and check out this great range of coffees CLICK HERE
Update 14th January 2010
In a bizarre twist today, a representative of Trung Nguyen conceded the plaque pictured was genuine. The representative then claimed that Dynamic Food Brokers, the former distributor, and The Trustee for the Hinchliffe Trust, the registered proprietor of the website are separate entities.
The full legal name of the entity is in fact "Stephen Hinchliffe as Trustee for The Hinchliffe Trust trading as Dynamic Food brokers". This same legal entity is both the former distributor and the proprietor of www.trungnguyen.com.au.
Mr hinchliffe acts both as Trustee of the Trust and as General Manager of the trading business.
Trung Nguyen needs to recognise their error and begin negotiations in good faith to bring an end to this matter.
From 2003, Dynamic Food brokers were one of two authorised distributors of Trung Nguyen products in Australia.
There were at that time a large number of parallel importers of domestic packaged product. At no time have Trung Nguyen made any attempt to regulate the sale of domestic products into the export markets.
In fact, staff of Trung Nguyen have repeatedly attempted, in some cases successfully, to sell product direct to customers of Dynamic Food Brokers.
Dynamic spent tens of thousands of dollars taking Trung Nguyen’s products outside the Viet Kieu community and building sales in mainstream Australia.
As part of these efforts, Dynamic Food Brokers set up the website coffee.iinet.com.au in 2004, replacing it with a more sophisticated ecommerce site, trungnguyen.com.au, two years later. Dynamic spent considerable sums of money creating and promoting this website
Other than providing some product images, Trung Nguyen contributed nothing to these efforts.
In 2008, Trung Nguyen’s Singapore subsidiary took over dealing with export sales. The Singapore office revoked Dynamic Food Brokers’ discount structure, and all overseas distributors were removed from Trung Nguyen’s main website.
At the same time, products were being deleted from the range without notice, prices in US Dollar terms were increased substantially, and promised marketing support failed to eventuate.
Dynamic was examining its options to remain viable in these circumstances from mid 2008.
On 1 September 2008, Dynamic emailed Trung Nguyen’s Singapore manager, Mr James Ho, outlining the problems that existed in the relationship, and offered the Trungnguyen.com.au website as a going concern to Trung Nguyen for a very reasonable price. Mr James Ho did not take the situation seriously, suggesting Dynamic speak to New World Trading, a newly authorised distributor in Melbourne, Australia.
The general manager of Dynamic rang and spoke to a director of New World trading who stated that the website, trungnguyen.com.au, was of no ongoing value to them.
At the same time, Dynamic had been approached to launch the Highlands Coffee brand in Australia.
Dynamic took the view, that as they had put substantial resources into developing the Trungnguyen.com.au website and building substantial traffic visiting the site, that they were entitled to use that traffic.
New product categories were added to the site listing Highlands products. Shortly after, the website was totally redesigned and became a Highlands site but still accessible from the URL trungnguyen.com.au, which remains the rightful property of Dynamic Food brokers. All Trung Nguyen products were removed as stocks became depleted.
At no time has Dynamic Food brokers been approached by Trung Nguyen to transfer this website to them. That they have chosen to make untrue allegations of attempted deception in the media instead of entering negotiations in good faith to resolve the issue shows their complete contempt for accepted business standards.
For further clarification, please contact
Mr Stephen Hinchliffe
General Manager,
Dynamic Food Brokers
Phone/fax 61 8 9379 0323
Mobile 61 403 836 567
Email schinch@iinet.net.au