Julie & Andy Pham: Northwest Vietnamese News

The history of Nguoi Viet Tay Bac (Northwest Vietnamese News) is the story of a family, a community, and its newspaper growing together. Kim and Hang Pham have successfully published a prosperous newspaper as a result of their core editorial and marketing strengths, and the explosive growth of the Vietnamese community in the 1990s. In recent years, Kim and Hang Pham’s three grown children, Julie, Andy, and Don have joined the core newspaper staff. Over two decades later, Andy and Julie Pham manage the newspaper with their parents’ guidance. Julie and Andy spotted an opportunity to grow and needed assistance to realize their new vision. The pressing issue was to finalize a growth strategy and implementation of a viable plan. Julie and Andy recognized that the core strengths of the newspaper could be leveraged to increase circulation and to modernize one of the two weekly published papers to target a broader generational range of readership.

With the help of the SBDC, the clients were able to perform a complete analysis of their business and its market; do SWOT analyses, complete a competitive analysis, and analyze national industry trends. They also performed a thorough market research survey of current customers and gained significant validation of current strengths along with new insights from the customer perspective. Armed with this knowledge they prepared a comprehensive business plan. The SBDC and the clients were able to successfully secure an SBA guaranteed term loan for the expansion plan, and implement a plan for expansion of circulation. It has resulted in an increased circulation of 3x, year over year. Overall, implementation of the business development strategies has also increased brand awareness for the newspaper editions. For a publisher, this correlates to increased readership and advertising.

Client Quote: “We lack formal business training and we have a very niche service, so we wanted to get individualized business assistance. Because we didn’t have the resources to pay for a consultant, we turned to the SBDC. Our adviser, Michael Franz, patiently walked us through how we could conduct market research of our audience and did an overall evaluation of our business. He also reviewed several drafts of our business plan and loan applications. As a result, we gained a better understanding of our market. We were also able to secure a business loan that helped increase our cash flow and enabled us to increase circulation and expand distribution.”