A Mumuso store in Ha Noi. — Photo cafef.vn
The Ministry of Industry and Trade on Friday announced the conclusions of its investigation of Mumuso Viet Nam Company Limited, saying that 99.3 per cent of its goods were imported from China.
According to the check-up results for the period of 2016 to May 31st 2018, the company has 2,273 products sold in Viet Nam.
MUMUSOKR trademark was registered by MUMUSOKR Company Limited at 601, 47 SEJONGDAERO 23-GIL, JONGRO-GU, Seoul, South Korea. The company was authorised by Mumuso Shanghai, which has the rights to use and manage the MUMUSOKR trademark worldwide.
Notably, the check-up found signs of legal violations by providing inadequate, wrong and inexact information to customers, the ministry said.
The company attempted to express its relative origins in South Korea. However, it did not provide documents clarifying the accuracy of the information, especially those relating to the origins of goods and production technologies.
In addition, MoIT said the company had signs of violating laws on competition as its advertisements caused misunderstanding about goods’ origin, creating unfair competition.
It used some public advertisements at its store chain with the words “Mumuso” and “Korea”, possibly making customers believe the brand is from South Korea.
The results also revealed that Mumuso violated legal regulations on goods labelling. Some products have labels in foreign languages and sub-labels in Vietnamese. However, the contents were not suitable with imported documents.
The company was also discovered to have violations of products’ announcement rules. The contents of components inscribed on sub-labels did not conform with the content of ingredients in its announcement. The check-up team withdrew the cosmetics from the market and sent the company’s six cosmetic samples to the Institute of Drug Quality Control for testing.
In addition, the company showed signs of violations on e-commerce as it did not provide exact information about its website to the ministry as well as other laws on trade. Specifically, it did not complete procedures relating to franchising of the MUMUSOKR trademark. It also did not register its business location and announcements on promotional programmes with authorities.
MoIT instructed its units to review and resolve the signs of violations under their management responsibilities. In Viet Nam, Mumuso introduces itself as a retail brand name from South Korea.
Mumuso has thousands of products in five main areas including beauty, healthcare, fashion accessories, office and home appliances with prices from only VND22,000 (around US$1) with store chain nationwide.
The ministry said Minister Tran Tuan Anh on May 25 signed a decision to start a check-up of the company’s trade activities, production, fake goods trading, competition and protecting customers’ rights.
The check-up team included some of its departments, the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Health and Market Watch Departments of Ha Noi and HCM City. — VNS