Jewelry chain all in the Dinh family
Between 1975 and 1979, Tien Dinh and Mui Luong tried unsuccessfully six times to escape from Vietnam with their six children.
Many escaping families split up hoping to improve the chances that at least some of them would make it, said son Hanh Dinh. “But my parents said, ‘Whoever God gave us is family. If we die, we all die. If we live, we all live.’ ”
The seventh attempt in 1979 was successful for all eight family members. They arrived in Indonesia and then in Garden Grove.
Hanh Dinh tells the story to explain why his family makes all their personal and business decisions as a unit.
Hanh and his brother Hai are listed as owners of NQ. Jewellers that recently opened in Fountain Valley. But the whole family really owns this newest store, Hanh emphasizes, just as the whole family owns four other jewelry stores in the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster.
They succeed or fail as a family.
It is an unusual achievement. Only about a third of family-owned small businesses survive into the second generation. Different goals, ambitions and management styles have disrupted more than one Thanksgiving dinner for families that jointly own businesses.
After the Dinhs moved to Garden Grove, family members old enough to work got jobs sewing clothes in the Southern California garment industry, says Hanh, who was nine when the family escaped Vietnam.
“But my mom’s passion, even when she was young in Vietnam, was to have a jewelry store,” he said.
Family members pooled their assets and in 1988, the Dinhs opened their first jewelry shop, Ngoc Quang, in the Asian Garden Mall, one of the largest Vietnamese retail centers in the United States with about 400 stores, more than 150 of them selling jewelry from tiny stalls as well as enclosed stores. Despite that competition, Ngoc Quang became known as a store with quality merchandise, Hanh says.
The children went to the Gemological Institute of America, at that time in Santa Monica, to learn diamond grading and jewelry manufacturing.
As the first shop prospered, the family opened another shop with the same name in the same mall, which built on the reputation the Ngoc Quang brand already had. Tien Dinh and Mui Luong became known in the Vietnamese community as Mr. and Mrs. Ngoc Quang, Hanh said laughing.
Each business was still part of the family enterprise. Everyone pitched in money and labor to build each new enterprise.
“My dad always saw this as a country of opportunity,” Hanh said, “All these years my parents work for the kids, and they wanted to keep us all close.”
Two years ago the family started thinking about the need to reach out to the non-Vietnamese community.
That idea built on the 2002 success of the Euro-Asian Furnishings store that daughter Van Dinh and her husband Peter Phan opened in Fountain Valley for mainstream shoppers.
“The new generation is coming and (the grandchildren) will be American,” Hanh says. “We try to keep them in the family business, but if we’re not approaching the mainstream, there won’t be opportunities for all of them.”
A discount store, Factory 2 U, was closing next to Phan’s furniture store, and the Dinhs thought the location would good for a different, grander jewelry store that Ngoc Quang has built in Westminster.
However, the entire family had to agree on every decision.
“Every meeting we discussed ideas. Some (family members) rejects, some agreed. We continued until everyone agreed on each idea,” Hanh says. “My parents wanted something that flowed and didn’t block the (customer’s) view (of the entire store) so we discussed how to make that work.”
Hanh shrugs at that process as though every family runs its enterprises on unanimous votes.
The resulting store is 8,000 square feet, built in glass and lined in cherry wood. The cases carry such brands as Verragio, ESQ Swiss and Michael B. Flat-screen televisions mounted around the store show videos of various jewelry products.
In the back, jewelry designers and repair technicians work in a windowed room so customers can watch. Security is heavy but not heavy handed.
The family decided on a less Vietnamese name, NQ. Jewellers – deliberately misspelling the word to get attention – in the hope of attracting a broad customer base.
In the weeks leading up to the opening, dozens of people cleaned glass, stocked cases and hung crystals from the dozens of orchid plants around the store.
They were all relatives.
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Comments
Yes, Indeed they are a largest jewelry
chain,also the most expensive too (compared to all other jewelry stores).
NIce and thanks for sharing about the families..these are really great jwellery and most expensive i think..
I hope that i will get to know more about such things ..
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