We often talk to you about products you can import from Vietnam. Textiles, agrifood, handicrafts — it's all real and serious. But sometimes, it's better to set aside the Excel spreadsheets and simply look at what you see in the markets, neighborhood grocery stores, and artisan workshops.

Here are five products that stopped us in our tracks. And that seem absent from French shelves for no valid reason.

1. Incense from Quảng Bình — and its packaging that is a work of art

In Vietnam, incense is not an accessory for yoga sold in new age boutiques. It's a daily element of family life, linked to respect for ancestors, temples, moments of calm.

The sticks produced in the Quảng Bình region, in Central Vietnam, are handmade for generations, with aromatic woods and local spices — cinnamon, agarwood, vetiver. The smell is deep, clean, without the chemical notes of industrial incense.

And then there's the packaging. Bunches of sticks in pink, red, yellow, tied with raffia and arranged in woven bamboo baskets. It's visually magnificent — the kind of product you place on a shelf and that guests notice before even lighting it.

In France, authentic artisanal Asian incense is almost impossible to find outside Chinese grocery stores. Decoration niche, wellness boutiques, concept stores — there's clearly a place for it.

2. The rice straw broom — the most beautiful and seemingly most useless object in the world

In the Mekong Delta markets, brooms are sold made from dried rice straw, tinted red or natural, tied to a bamboo handle. They are light, soft, and last for years.

But let's be honest: it's not the miracle product of the household cleaning market. What stands out is their aesthetic. They are beautiful in a way no European broom is beautiful. Hung in a kitchen or entryway, they are functional decorative objects — exactly the category that "slow living" decoration boutiques are looking for.

Production price: less than €1.50. Reasonable retail price in a Parisian decoration store: €22 to €35. The margin exists. And so does the storytelling.

3. Hội An silk — because ethical fashion deserves better than labeled organic cotton

Hội An is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it deserves every letter of that classification. In its yellow streets and red lanterns, dozens of sewing workshops offer custom silk clothing — shirts, dresses, suits — delivered in 48 hours for prices that seem unreal compared to European standards.

But Hội An silk is also a raw material. The fabrics sold by the meter in local markets are of remarkable quality: natural silk, not chemically treated, with traditional patterns (lotus flowers, stylized dragons, Cham geometric motifs) that you find nowhere else.

For a French textile designer looking for a noble, differentiating material, with a real story behind every meter — here's something. Ethical fashion and slow fashion customers want it. They're just waiting for it to be offered to them.

4. Phú Quốc pepper — the best-kept secret of chefs

You know Kampot pepper (Cambodia). It has a well-deserved international reputation. But 30 kilometers as the crow flies away, on the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc, grow pepper plants equally remarkable — and far less known outside of Vietnam.

Phú Quốc pepper is cultivated on wooden trellises in family gardens. It exists in black, white, red, and green versions. The red version (harvested ripe) is particularly rare — sweet, fruity, almost floral. Professional chefs who have tasted it generally don't go back.

In France, it is almost absent from specialty groceries. Premium peppers sold between €15 and €40 per 50g in luxury grocery stores are almost all Kampot or Sarawak. Phú Quốc is a real differentiating option for an importer who wants to build a high-end spice range.

5. Dried medicinal herbs — Vietnamese pharmacopoeia that fascinates French herbalists

In any Vietnamese market, there's a corner where dozens of sachets of dried herbs pile up — roots, leaves, flowers, barks. It's Vietnamese traditional medicine, thuốc nam, which naturally coexists with conventional medicine.

Some of these plants have real commercial potential in France in the herbalist-wellness segment: dehydrated ginger with its improbable shapes (Vietnamese varieties have enormous rhizomes, almost sculpted), dried lemongrass, lotus flowers for herbal tea, wild chrysanthemum flowers.

What's missing is the path between these markets and French wellness boutiques. The product exists, the demand exists, the space in between is still empty.

Are we suggesting to import everything at once? No. But sometimes, the best business idea starts with a walk through a foreign market and a simple question: why don't we have this at home?

If one of these leads speaks to you, CNL Sourcing can do the fieldwork — find producers, test samples, validate export feasibility.