Today was our first full day in country and it was busy. We started off learning about some developments in the Mekong Delta area and learned a bit of Vietnamese. After lunch we headed off to our first company tour: TTT.

TTT is an interior design and construction company. They seem to mostly work with fancy hotels and wealthier private citizens. They are also a sustainability oriented company, having earned the LEED gold certificate on their Porsche Showroom here in Ho Chi Minh. This was interesting to learn because I know about LEED and its basic purpose of verifying buildings are made to a certain degree of sustainability, but I assumed it was an American categorization, not global. I was happy to learn that it is a global focus and that companies here in Vietnam are pursuing this certification.

I was also impressed by the scope of TTT, they not only serve five star hotels and wealthy individuals, but they also furnish places outside of Vietnam. A piece of technology they have to aid this is a 3D visualizing software. This is used so that companies in the US or Canada or other places can send in the data of the rooms they want furnished and then TTT can send sample drawings and pieces through the software so the companies can see what their space would look like without having to come to Vietnam to see the furniture.

Their factory floor had some interesting designs. The first thing I noticed was a waterfall system near the spray painters. This was used to catch aerosol paint particles and wash them out of the room so there wouldn’t be as much breathed in. We were also told about how the company focuses of low VOC products because VOC is a common adhesive that is bad to inhale. TTT presses boards together to connect their wood with less VOC.