The initiative aims to connect government agencies, industry associations, fashion brands, and the content creator community to support Vietnam's fashion industry in entering its next growth phase.
Fashion Up Vietnam is part of the broader initiative "Promoting E-Commerce Development in Key Economic Sectors," initiated by iDEA to focus resources on industries with strong potential to contribute to Vietnam's digital economy. Fashion has been identified as one of the priority sectors due to its large market size, rapid digital transformation, and ability to bring together different parts of the creative economy, from design, manufacturing, and retail to digital content and consumer communities.
Vietnamese Fashion on E-Commerce: A large and fast-growing market that needs new capabilities to go further
Fashion is one of Vietnam's largest retail categories. According to ECDB, Vietnam’s Fashion market, including apparel and footwear, is estimated to be worth approximately VND 123 trillion, accounting for around 20-25% of the country’s total retail market while maintaining annual growth of 10-15%.
While traditional fashion retail grew by only around 3.6% annually between 2022 and 2024, the fashion segment in e-commerce recorded an average annual growth of approximately 20-30%. This disparity underscores the increasingly important role of e-commerce as a growth driver for the fashion industry, particularly as consumer behavior continues to shift toward content-driven and community-based engagement.
On TikTok Shop, Fashion is currently among the platform’s top five categories, with average annual revenue growth exceeding 60% - significantly outpacing the broader industry’s growth rate. By 2025, the number of revenue-generating fashion sellers on TikTok Shop had increased 8.5 times compared to 2022, surpassing 115,000 sellers. Average revenue per seller also increased 3.2 times over the same period.
This growth reflects a clear shift in shopping behavior, as Vietnamese consumers increasingly discover trends and make fashion purchasing decisions through digital content. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of TikTok Shop’s discovery-based e-commerce model compared with traditional e-commerce models. For a category driven by emotion, aesthetics, and personal expression such as fashion, this model helps bridge the gap between brands and consumers, creating opportunities for brands to be discovered through short-form videos, livestreams, and content creators.
However, rapid growth also presents new challenges for the industry. Speaking at the seminar, Ms. Le Hoang Oanh, Director General of iDEA, said: "Many traditional fashion brands continue to face significant challenges transitioning to the digital environment - particularly when it comes to creating engaging content, running livestream operations, managing customer data, and reaching the next generation of consumers. Meanwhile, brands that originated online face a different set of pressures: how to build long-term brand equity, reduce reliance on promotions, and differentiate in an increasingly competitive market. The content creator community is playing an ever more important role across the digital Fashion value chain - but creators, too, need more opportunities to connect, collaborate, and develop professionally."
Connecting the ecosystem to unlock Vietnamese Fashion's growth potential
Against this backdrop, Fashion Up Vietnam has been designed not merely as a short-term support program, but as a collaborative ecosystem model for Vietnam’s Fashion industry in the digital environment. The initiative seeks to create a shared platform where government agencies, industry associations, fashion brands, and content creators can exchange ideas, collaborate, and take collective action to support industry development.
Mr. Nguyen Lam Thanh, Representative of TikTok Vietnam, said: "The next phase of growth for Vietnamese Fashion on e-commerce will not be determined by how many brands join the platform, but by whether those brands have the operational capabilities to build the capabilities needed to scale, tell compelling stories, build consumer trust, and drive long-term loyalty. Fashion Up Vietnam was built - alongside regulators, local authorities, businesses, and creators - to address exactly that challenge: to convert the industry's rapid growth rate into sustainable competitive advantage for Vietnamese Fashion."
Accordingly, Fashion Up Vietnam will focus on developing and enhancing capabilities across content creation, brand building, livestreaming, and store operations throughout the Fashion ecosystem.
In its first year, the program targets bringing together at least 200 founding members of the Fashion Up Vietnam Club - including brands, sellers, designers, content creators, and key stakeholders across the Fashion ecosystem.
Through the Fashion Up Vietnam Club, TikTok Shop will collaborate with relevant partners to deliver practical support activities for participating members, including training on store operations, livestreaming, digital advertising, content creation, brand development, and collaboration with content creators. The program will also maintain regular updates on content creation tools, content policies, and platform commerce policies, while collecting feedback from members to help build a sustainable digital fashion community.
The initiative also aims to encourage the creation of around 10,000 stories about Vietnamese fashion through videos using the hashtag #FashionUpVietnam, generating around 1 billion views on TikTok. In addition, it will host ongoing activities to recognize outstanding contributions from brands and creators across the industry.
The launch of Fashion Up Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City reflects the city’s unique role within Vietnam’s Fashion ecosystem. As the country’s largest economic, commercial, and consumer hub, Ho Chi Minh City is home to a vibrant concentration of Fashion brands, retailers, designers, content creators, and young consumers. This provides a strong foundation for the city to serve as a hub for collaboration, testing new approaches, and scaling innovative models for the development of Vietnamese fashion in the digital economy.
With the support of HCMC DOIT, Fashion Up Vietnam aims to build a collaborative model that can be replicated more broadly, where local authorities connect resources, businesses strengthen operational capabilities, content creators help build trust, and digital platforms provide tools, data, training, and an enabling environment for growth.
