“Proud Innovators: Presenting a Revolutionary Biotech Product, ‘Made by Vietnam’, Ready to Take on the World.”

From an unknown brand, having to sell probiotics under a foreign partner’s brand when going abroad and unable to survive in the domestic market, LiveSpo has made a remarkable comeback.

Revolving around the story of bringing the brand back from the brink and rising strongly, LiveSpo’s CEO – Mr. Dang Quoc Hung, shared some surprising insights.

When it comes to LiveSpo, I’m very impressed with the image of your team selling probiotics and exporting entire containers to foreign partners. But in the beginning, you had to sell your “children” under someone else’s brand. Looking back at that time, what are your thoughts?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: It was indeed a struggle, but back then, we were desperate (laughs).

You know, in 2010, when Dr. Nguyen Hoa Anh (Chairman of LiveSpo Pharma and the inventor of the product) returned to Vietnam, everyone thought he was crazy because of his idea of a future without antibiotics.

His product was good, but it couldn’t be sold domestically because people didn’t believe in it. In our country, when it comes to buying something related to health protection, many people tend to choose foreign products over local ones. This led to LiveSpo’s decision to “take our bell overseas.”

Our approach was to sponsor international scientific conferences on microbiology and look for customers on the Alibaba e-commerce platform. The world was already aware of the benefits of probiotics and their use in daily life, so they were more receptive to a new product if it had good quality and pricing. Through Alibaba, they found LiveSpo to place OEM orders (manufacturing under another company’s name) and sold it at about 90% of the price of a liquid probiotic product from a well-known French company.

To be honest, we felt very conflicted! We exported entire containers to Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Peru, but on the box, there was only a tiny line that said “Made in Vietnam” along with the factory name and address… But no matter what, when holding that finished product, we still felt proud that Vietnamese people had created something filled with our intellect, which could be tentatively called biotechnology. That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? (laughs)

Now, LiveSpo has gone global with its own brand and is present in nearly 20 countries. However, we still maintain the OEM channel as a source of revenue and out of long-term sentiment for our loyal customers. The first container went to Pakistan, and that customer is still with us today.

You went abroad to come back stronger, and now you’re focusing on developing the domestic market. That’s creative, but more importantly: how did you turn that idea into reality?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: At first, despite our limited finances, we still took our product to be presented at a conference on probiotics in Europe, specifically in the Czech Republic in 2019. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and attending international workshops became restricted. After the pandemic, we continued to participate in the International Microbiology Conference ASM (Washington DC, 2022), exhibited at the world-leading biotechnology breakthrough product exhibition Bio-Boston in the US in 2023, and recently attended the Vitafoods Europe International Nutrition and Food Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2024.

That was LiveSpo’s path. We dared to go everywhere because we knew our product was extremely different. The world is currently developing probiotics in the traditional realm, mainly in powder form. There’s a French company that makes liquid probiotics, but theirs is a single strain and low concentration. The technology for multi-strain, high-concentration probiotic spores in liquid form does not exist yet, especially for “pre-activated” products that can be sprayed directly into the ears, nose, throat, and vagina, taking effect quickly within just 10-15 minutes… This is completely new.

In the pharmaceutical industry, you can’t just talk; you have to provide clinical evidence. For example, if you want to claim that your product can stop acute diarrhea within 30 minutes, you must have a basis and continuously test it for 5 to 7 years, then publish the clinical research in international scientific journals.

I believe very few companies can do what LiveSpo has done. That is, throughout the product development process, we followed international standards: registering clinical trials to US standards, participating in international scientific conferences, then publishing the clinical trial results in leading scientific journals like Nature Scientific Reports, and finally attending exhibitions for new and breakthrough products worldwide.

I remember that initially, Dr. Hoa Anh was struggling with sales. Witnessing such a good product not being trusted, I thought I had to do something to make people aware, understand, and believe in it.

At first, Dr. Hoa Anh didn’t believe in my path, so I had to convince him by setting a condition: If I can sell 20,000 products (about half a container) within a year, he must agree to give me exclusive rights.

I established five companies simultaneously, each group specializing in a different aspect, and we simultaneously covered the market. We used Facebook as our primary tool and focused our finances on marketing. When I met Dr. Hoa Anh in 2016, it took more than a year to prepare, from unifying the product name to designing the packaging… We started selling at the beginning of 2018, and within just six months, we achieved our plan.

Later, when we had some brand recognition in the international market, we returned to the domestic market with a different mindset and continued to expand globally.

Currently, the domestic pharmaceutical market sees strong participation from pharmacy chains. How did you convince these chains to work with you when you returned to the domestic market?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: To be included in these pharmacy chains, it’s a given that we must have appropriate discount policies, along with complete certifications for quality and legality. To maintain their image, they prefer to collaborate with professional suppliers who have products with internationally recognized clinical trials and know how to market them.

Getting into these pharmacy chains was not easy for us. For example, when we first started, one pharmacy chain requested co-branding and deep discounts. Another chain tested us by working together on a small scale for an entire year. Yet another chain gave us deep discounts, but our products still didn’t sell because the key is that we must sell together with them. Fortunately, LiveSpo eventually found a way to sell effectively with them and has since expanded our cooperation with pharmacy chains on a more equitable basis.

In business, people think that having a product is everything, but even if the product is good or unique, the effort put into marketing and distribution is enormous. For a product to have a place in the market, the people in charge of distribution and marketing must have ambition, strategy, and passion.

What about the traditional OTC channel?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: In our strategy, we always respect traditional pharmacies nationwide.

In the initial phase, we developed relationships with over 2,000 pharmacies that sold our products. However, after developing multiple channels, many pharmacies tended to only sell products that were exclusively distributed through the traditional pharmacy channel.

During that phase, we had to make a difficult decision: to continue or stop this channel because everything was too stressful. We had a large team of nearly 100 sales representatives, but they were only used to the company running TV commercials, while they just delivered the goods. If we continued like this, the company would eventually die due to losses, so we might as well stop.

But we understood that without the OTC channel, there would still be a significant gap in our goal to conquer the domestic market. So, LiveSpo started with a new strategy to directly address these difficulties.

The sales team had to learn three things: first, understand that “selling” doesn’t just mean “delivering goods”; second, know how to coordinate marketing and work together with pharmacies; and third, be able to train pharmacies about the product. Something that seemed simple wasn’t easy at all. It took more than six months for things to change.

Now, the OTC channel has achieved certain successes, with an increasing number of partner pharmacies and growing sales.

Now, LiveSpo has established a certain position in the domestic market, but I know that many doctors still seem skeptical when mentioning this brand.

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: I think the doctors’ skepticism is justified. They want to provide the best for their patients based on their knowledge. That’s partly why LiveSpo needs to build its brand globally and then return to convince the doctors.

In fact, when Mekong Capital invested in LiveSpo, they also wanted to know if we were telling the truth, so they independently took our product to Eurofins in Germany – a world-leading testing laboratory, and compared it with a very well-known French probiotic product. The results showed that some of LiveSpo’s quality indicators were superior… Thanks to this, Mekong Capital quickly decided to invest.

To convince doctors, we can only strive to create the best product along with internationally recognized clinical trials published in leading scientific journals. We can’t convince them by saying, “Doctor, our product is really, really good; please believe me.”

But specifically, when meeting with doctors, what do you say to convince them?

CEO Dang Quoc Hung: Initially, we could only approach them outside the hospital to hold scientific workshops. 

Now, LiveSpo has established close cooperation with many major institutes such as the Central Pediatric Hospital, Thai Nguyen General Hospital, and some other hospitals… We will also be cooperating with some other large hospitals soon.

To answer your question in detail, let me share a story. When COVID-19 broke out, we had scientific grounds to show that LiveSpo NAVAX probiotic spores in nasal spray form could help prevent and treat this disease. At that time, many people were skeptical because they thought probiotics were only for the digestive tract, and no one knew about nasal sprays for the ears, nose, and throat. Some even said to us: Do you want people to sniff something meant for the digestive tract?

However, after we had two consecutive articles published in Nature Scientific Reports, a leading scientific journal in the world, in 2022 and 2023, everything changed dramatically. Recently, we had booths at two large respiratory conferences, one in the North and one in the South, each attracting about 1,100-1,200 doctors, and they all welcomed us. The doctors respected and were more willing to listen to our research, and they were thrilled to discover that the authors of these studies were Vietnamese, including some of their respected colleagues.