Bath & Body Works has opened a new store at Gold Coast Nha Trang in Vietnam, operated by Valiram Group, the Southeast Asian luxury and lifestyle retail group that runs the brand across the Asia Pacific region as an official franchise partner. FranchiseTV reported the opening on 31 October 2026.
FranchiseTV described the Gold Coast Nha Trang store as Bath & Body Works’ official entry into Vietnam. Chau Nguyen, Country General Manager for Vietnam at Valiram, framed it as a move into a new city market and referred to it as another chapter for “BBW Vietnam”, which suggests Valiram already had a Vietnam operation for the brand. The report does not give the store’s size, opening date or the number of Vietnam stores planned.
“Entering a new market is always meaningful.”
Chau Nguyen, Country General Manager, Vietnam, Valiram
Nguyen said the team brought the brand’s latest store concept to Nha Trang, in a prime location that “was not easy to secure”, and that the journey involved many challenges before the opening.
Valiram Group is a Malaysia-based retailer that began in 1935 as a small family-run trading company in Kuala Lumpur. It moved from trading into duty-free retail in the 1970s and launched the Flying Emporium luxury multi-brand store at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2001, according to FranchiseTV.
Today the group operates in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It employs more than 6,000 people representing over 40 nationalities and handles beauty and lifestyle names beyond Bath & Body Works, including Molton Brown, Rituals, Grown Alchemist and Beaute Love.
The company is the official franchise partner operating Bath & Body Works stores across the Asia Pacific region, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Australia. Vietnam now adds a coastal city location to that network.
The opening shows how an established multi-country operator can extend a US brand city by city once it holds the partner role. For brand owners weighing Southeast Asian entry, the practical lesson is that prime mall space and local operating teams often decide the pace of rollout, a point Valiram’s own Vietnam head made about the Nha Trang site. The same pattern of regional operators carrying global brands appears in Primark’s Gulf rollout through Alshaya Group and in the market overview American franchise brands in Southeast Asia and the Gulf.
Investors tracking Vietnam can also read how a home-grown concept travels the other way in East West Barbershop’s Vietnam-to-international model, and how another Asian format entered a new market in LEE GIMBAP’s Tokyo flagship launch.
