A Country Stops Making Things for Others and Starts Making Things That Matter

"Vietnam is experiencing a shift from being the workshop of the world to a maker of brands that matter." Chí-An De Leo, co-founder of Base Design Saigon, delivers this assessment to Monocle at the studio's Ho Chi Minh City headquarters. The resources are there. The talent is there. What was missing, De Leo argues, was intent.

Sofia's craft scene knows this tension. Bulgarian specialty coffee roasters and bean-to-bar chocolate makers face the same question every time they package a product: how do you tell a distinctly Bulgarian story on a global stage, rather than competing on price or production volume? The answer, if Base Design Saigon's trajectory is any indication, lies in doubling down on what makes a place specific.

The Partnership That Changed the Model

Joshua Breidenbach arrived in Asia from the United States in 2006. De Leo, born in Germany to Vietnamese-French and Italian parents, grew up across France, Taiwan, the UK, and Vietnam. They met in Ho Chi Minh City while working for different advertising agencies, and in 2011 they founded Rice, a branding agency built on elevating Vietnamese businesses through marketing that took their stories seriously.

By 2025, Rice had outgrown itself. Too established for scrappy projects, still lacking international infrastructure. The solution was not to sell. Breidenbach and De Leo became the fifth member of Base Design, a Brussels-founded network with offices in Geneva, New York, and Melbourne. The rebrand to Base Design Saigon kept the team of 28 independent while plugging them into a global network.

Joshua Breidenbach

Everyone here has a counterpart in another part of the world who they can bounce off.

Chocolate Animals and Swirling Typography

The proof is in the client work. Marou, the Vietnamese bean-to-bar chocolatier, was making its own leap, opening a shop in Singapore's Changi Airport. Base Design Saigon developed a product line of chocolate animals reflecting the ecosystem of cacao farms, turning origin story into visual identity. This is not generic luxury positioning. It is specific, rooted, unmistakably Vietnamese.

In Sofia, Flow Cacao works with the same philosophy: single-origin beans, transparent sourcing, storytelling around the product. The model of craft chocolate that Marou represents is not unique to Vietnam. It is a global movement of makers who believe where something comes from matters as much as how it tastes.

Highlands Coffee, Vietnam's largest chain, presented a different challenge. With 1,000 shops and backing from Filipino fast-food giant Jollibee, the brand needed repositioning that could scale without losing authenticity. Base Design Saigon developed new packaging, visual guidelines, and a limited-run espresso campaign featuring swirling typography that positioned Vietnamese coffee as a serious global contender.

Chí-An De Leo

Both projects are deeply authentic to themselves and to Vietnam, with a clarity of story and point of view that invites global curiosity and genuine participation.

Building Infrastructure for the Next Generation

In 2025, Breidenbach and De Leo hosted the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) conference in Ho Chi Minh City, drawing 130 industry leaders.

Chí-An De Leo

It has been the maddest year of our career.

Hosting a global design conference mid-rebrand was deliberate: a statement that Vietnam belongs at the centre of the branding world.

Rice, as an entity, did not disappear. The old name now serves as an umbrella for everything adjacent to client work: an upcycled plastic furniture line called Mai, travel guides, design conferences, and a studio-academy model creating work placements for Vietnamese design students. This is infrastructure, not marketing.

Chí-An De Leo

Vietnamese businesses have an opportunity to shape the country's reputation abroad. The world has yet to make up its mind about 'Made in Vietnam'.

Bulgarian craft producers face the same choice: compete on price, or compete on story. The world has not made up its mind about "Made in Bulgaria" either. The question is whether the intent exists to shape that narrative.