Industry context, the company & market share
TAMYCO (TAM MY IMPORT EXPORT CO., LTD) is a logistics provider specialising in the reefer (refrigerated container) niche for seafood and fruit. Formerly GS Logistics, it brings more than 10 years of experience.
Vietnam ranks 11th of 50 emerging logistics markets (Agility 2022), with a forecast CAGR of 5.5% over 2022–2027. More than 43,000 logistics firms operate, yet up to 90% are SMEs capitalised below VND 10 billion. TAMYCO has 20 staff across 5 departments: Sales, OPS, CS, Pricing and internal functions.
Reefer accounts for roughly 20% of container exports to the USA. Seeing the potential, TAMYCO concentrated its reefer services on seafood and fruit; today 70% of customers come from frozen cargo. Revenue reached VND 140 billion in 2021 (EBIT 21 billion) and VND 200 billion in 2022 (EBIT 40 billion) — profit comes mainly from the freight margin (about 10% of input price).
Symptom: customer retention in free fall
While the logistics industry boomed in 2020–2022, TAMYCO failed to ride the wave. CRR is calculated as CRR = ((E − N) / S) × 100 (S: start of period, E: end of period, N: new customers).
All-market: CRR fell sharply from 77.1% (2020–2021) to 35.8% (2021–2022). In the USA–Canada market specifically — which delivers most of the profit — CRR sits below the service-industry average (67%), collapsing from 69.95% to 28.4%. The frozen-seafood segment dropped from ~79% to ~43%.
Customer cohorts: who stays, who leaves?
From Dashboard 5 (Appendix 1) with the colour code red = 1 year, gold = 2 consecutive years, green = 3 consecutive years. Churn surged in the 2021–2022 period.
The frozen-seafood segment exporting to USA–Canada via reefer containers was chosen as the focus: it contributes the highest profit and the largest number of accounts, yet shows the most severe CRR decline. In 2022 the company lost 102 customers in total, including 25 in seafood alone.
Four potential problem areas
From the "problem mess" gathered through stakeholder interviews (Appendix 2), four prominent problems were grouped. The Appendix 3 survey (10 respondents, 1–5 scale) quantifies the level of agreement.
3 of 4 customers feel TAMYCO’s rates sit above the market. The US lane runs mainly on CMA CGM & Evergreen — pricing is unattractive.
2 of 4 customers find sales slow to respond and prone to misquoting (forgetting AMS surcharges, VAT). Trust in sales is tied to trust in the company.
Few shipping lines (CMA, EMC, ONE), missing value-added services (trucking, insurance, FOB agency). Concentrating resources on a handful of lines erodes competitiveness.
No alliance membership, no FMC Bond. FOB is just 215 of 10,825 TEU (~2%) versus the 20–30% industry norm. Customers hesitate to entrust high-value shipments.
Click any problem cell to highlight it on the average chart below. The deeper the teal, the stronger the agreement.
Main problem: a narrow service portfolio
"Low reputation" is only the visible consequence. At the core lies an impoverished product–service portfolio: missing value-added services, few lanes, few shipping-line and third-party partners.
The USA–Canada lane can only be booked through CMA CGM – Evergreen – ZIM (lines with loose policies that don’t require an FMC Bond). This dependence has grown year on year. Drilling into TEU volume by carrier, CMA CGM supplies nearly 80% of TAMYCO’s capacity — an alarming risk concentration.
On service usage, most customers buy only Ocean Freight; value-added services (customs clearance, trucking, insurance, agency) are barely used — even though the company owns its own truck fleet. FOB makes up just ~2% of total TEU, far below the industry norm.
"An impoverished portfolio of products offered to customers" — from missing add-on services (trucking, insurance, agency, import handling…) to weak relationship-building capability across different shipping lines. With no Pricing team, no one manages the product portfolio.
Justifying the problem through a satisfaction survey
A survey of 10 customers (8 long-standing + 2 new), 1–10 scale, measuring satisfaction as the "delta between expectation and experience." Falling CRR is itself evidence that satisfaction is troubled.
According to Oláh et al., diversifying the service portfolio (by profit) correlates positively with firm flexibility and operational capability. Hartmann likewise shows that "collaboration" with carriers/third parties strongly affects loyalty. Retaining existing customers costs far less than acquiring new ones (Ahmad & Buttle).
Validating the root causes
Interviews with 6 experts (ports, carriers, competitors) point to 4 potential causes behind the narrow service portfolio.
Missing trucking, customs, insurance, import handling, LCL — a reliable local service network is a success factor (Sheng Teng Huang).
Door-to-door customers need partners in the destination country. Without international links, there’s no way to share a contract number for better rates.
MSC, Maersk, ONE, OOCL and Hapag-Lloyd all require an FMC Bond to issue a valid HBL and sign freight-supply contracts.
Rate requests scattered across many people, with no systematic data → poor price comparison, slow responses, and missed carrier priorities.
A lack of service resources from shipping lines. Ocean freight is every forwarder’s core product; TAMYCO acts as agent for only 2 lines on the US route (a slight +10 TEU in 2022 thanks to ZIM). The deepest root is the absence of an FMC Bond — the barrier to partnering with major carriers.
Solutions: from Pricing & FMC Bond to the WCA alliance
Two feasible solutions and one main solution, chosen on the basis of data, research and expert interviews.
A unit bridging all relationships between the company and carriers, truckers and agencies. It centralises rate & service updates, negotiates on the spot and maintains relationships. Cost ~VND 15 million/month (≈USD 700) — achievable by restructuring existing staff. This is a short-term "firefighting" measure.
It addresses both the inbound side (partnering with major carriers) and the outbound side (FOB handling, co-loading, sharing contract numbers, holding the MBL + issuing the HBL). The FMC also offers protection via CADRS. Cost: USD 1,000 service fee + USD 6,000 insurance.
WCA unlocks global connectivity, uses co-loaders to broaden the carrier portfolio in the short term, raises reputation, and serves as a priority springboard for obtaining an FMC Bond. Maintenance fee ~USD 5,000/year (VND 110 million). It needs at least 60–100 FOB / import-handling shipments (profit USD 50–100 each) to break even.
Action plan & implementation roadmap
A set of actions spanning Jan 2024 → Jan 2025, split into 3 streams: Back Office preparation, Front Office restructuring, and the WCA Inter Global application.
Organisational restructuring
The old structure split Sales only into Import/Export. The new structure separates Domestic Sales & International Sales, and adds a Pricing department that consolidates rates from every source (domestic carriers, third parties, global logistics agents).
Old structure
New structure (post-WCA)
The change affects only the Pricing function (working centrally with every carrier in Vietnam). Announce it when the Pricing department is established (Oct 2024). After joining WCA, use membership benefits to apply for an FMC Bond (expected 2025) and inform partners.
Business model & research methodology
TAMYCO positions its core values around C-TRUST (Customer commitment, Transparency, Respect, Unity, Sustainability, Transformation) and a comprehensive 3PL model.
Research methodology
The report uses a qualitative approach: grounded theory (literature review + data visualised in Tableau), action research (a plan currently running at TAMYCO), and phenomenological research (interviews with staff, customers and partners).
Real-world experience and events in operations.
Focused on customers & stakeholders for the most objective perspective.
Staff surveys after each step of identifying symptom – problem – cause.
Business Model Canvas (condensed)
Comprehensive logistics services, real-time tracking, gensets for refrigerated cargo, optimised cost, fast & reliable.
Shipping lines, manufacturers, traders, importers/exporters, other logistics firms, ports, truckers, customs brokers.
Import-handling services, Ocean Freight, Air Freight, value-added services.
Data appendix & industry benchmarks
The source data tables used to build the dashboards above, alongside reference carrier benchmarks (Statista, Alphaliner, Maritime Analytica).