Ngoan and her products.

“People told me I would be crazy to quit my job to sell wooden fish. I still remember the first wooden fish that I manually made. I showed them to my friends and offered it at VND30,000 but no one bought them,” Ngoan recalled.

After graduating from the Graphic Design Faculty at Hanoi Architectural University in 2017, Ngoan worked as a designer for a woodwork enterprise. When she was a little girl, Ngoan loved making recycled products as gifts for her friends, so this was an ideal job for her.

However, Ngoan always cherished doing something for herself. At first, she thought that she could work at the workshop while making handmade products to sell online. But she realized that this approach did not work.

In May 2018, Ngoan decided to quit her job to focus on her own business. She opened a small shop that sells wooden fish designed and produced by herself. She had to return the stall soon after that. After two months failing to find a new store, Ngoan decided to go to a rural area to build her own workshop.

Born in Ha Nam Province, she studied and lived in Hanoi for eight years, but Ngoan chose Thai Nguyen province to launch her business.

“My parents have passed away, so I did not choose to return to my hometown but instead to a new land where no one knows who I am and I do not know them. If I go back to my hometown, I will get many questions from my relatives and neighbors about my decision, which they might think crazy,” Ngoan said.

She hired a plot of 100m2 land to build a small house of 20m2. In order to save costs, she did everything that she could by herself.

She called her house House of Fish. “The fish house marks the fact that I dared to give up my job and ignored the laughter of everyone to pursue my passion,” she said.

“I love my current life because I can live with my passion. There is also a very rich material resource here for me to freely realize my ideas - something that Hanoi cannot offer,” Ngoan said.

Ngoan’s unique wooden fish:

Ngoan's small house in Thai Nguyen

Ngoan paints her house.

Making the fence

Ngoan's workshop, where wooden fish produced.

Ngoan's garden

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