Coolmate on Amazon: how a Vietnamese brand opened with socks
Coolmate's Amazon US strategy shows Vietnamese brands a way abroad: open with a product shoppers can compare, tell the origin story later.
In early January 2025, Coolmate's first shipment landed in the US after two months of preparation. Six months later, the brand's US sales reached 1 million USD, according to CafeBiz. Coolmate also says its Coolmate Amazon US sales hit 3 million USD after 12 months (CafeBiz). Coolmate is a Vietnamese online-first menswear brand known for basics like T-shirts, socks and underwear.
The product named in coverage of the US push is a line of athletic socks. According to Coolmate, as reported by VnExpress on its November 2025 funding round, the socks earned a Best Seller badge on Amazon US within a few months and now draw more than 25,000 orders a month (VnExpress).
126Insights' view: this is the most useful lesson in how Coolmate went abroad. A Vietnamese brand selling in another market should open with one sharp product: an everyday item, easy to compare, that a stranger can buy without knowing where the brand comes from. The identity story can wait until people are buying. The approach carries risk, and for Coolmate it sits in two places: a sales channel it does not own, and a positioning being stretched in several directions at once.
Coolmate's home strategy: selling convenience
Coolmate started from a 20 m² warehouse and a website selling T-shirts, socks and underwear (Vietcetera). From the start it chose basics for men, sold online, and offered 60-day returns (CafeF).
Picture the customer this model targets. He does not want to lose a weekend afternoon in a shopping mall. He wants to reorder the shirt that already fit, tap a few times, and send it back if it doesn't. Our reading: in the early years, what Coolmate sold was convenience, and fashion was the packaging. The 60-day return policy removes the biggest worry about buying clothes online, the fear of not being able to try them on. We have written before that after-sale promises are part of the product, and Coolmate is a clear example.
The model grew fast. According to CafeBiz, revenue went from 39 billion dong in 2020 to about 140 billion in 2021, 290 to 293 billion in 2022 and 363 billion in 2023 (CafeBiz). In the first half of 2025, based on e-commerce data from YouNet ECI (a Vietnamese social and e-commerce analytics firm), Coolmate topped its Sustainable Growth Brands ranking for online marketplaces, with more than 64 billion dong in revenue recorded on that channel, up 37% (Vietnambiz). Selling online let the brand grow without carrying store rent.
Photo by Hai Nguyen on Unsplash
What Coolmate sells on Amazon
When Coolmate and the press talk about the US, they point to the athletic socks. A photo caption in the VnExpress piece reads “Coolmate women's socks on Amazon” (VnExpress). That means the socks sold in the US include a women's version, even though in Vietnam Coolmate grew up on menswear.
One caveat when reading these numbers: the Best Seller badge, the 25,000 monthly orders, and the 1 million and 3 million USD figures are all company-reported. There is no independent data to check them against.
If they hold, they show that for a brand with stock in the US only since early 2025, one product found buyers in a place where almost nobody knew the Coolmate name.
Why a pair of socks opens doors more easily than “Made in Vietnam”
Suppose someone in Texas is searching for running socks on Amazon. Dozens of options fill the screen. They compare price, pairs per pack, thickness, star ratings and number of reviews. Socks come in a few sizes, and a wrong pick costs little. The buyer does not need to know where the brand is from to click.
A T-shirt or a pair of trousers is different. The shopper has to guess the cut, guess the fabric, and guess the sizing of a brand they have never heard of. The less a product makes people guess, the better it suits opening a new market.
To be fair, the origin story still has a place, and easy to compare does not mean cheapest. There is simply no data showing that American shoppers buy Coolmate socks because they are made in Vietnam. The product sold before the story had a chance to be told.
It is like moving into a new neighborhood. You bring a plate of cake to the neighbors first. They taste it, like it, and only then ask where you're from. Tell your hometown story before they've tasted the cake and few will sit through it.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
Coolmate raised money with a vision stated in numbers
For its first round, the founding team went on Google, listed 30 to 40 funds and sent emails. By Series C (a later-stage round led by larger institutional investors), the CEO said in-person meetings were needed to convince investors (Vietnambiz). Also per Vietnambiz, citing a VinVentures report, the roughly 22.34 million USD Coolmate raised in 2025 was the largest startup investment deal in Vietnam that year (same source). On 3 November 2025, Coolmate announced it had completed a Series C led by Vertex Growth Fund, with Cool Japan Fund and South Korea's Youngone CVC joining. Coolmate did not disclose the round's value (CafeF).
What we find worth learning is how Coolmate turns its goals into numbers. In late March 2024, on its fifth birthday, it announced targets for 2030: 500 million USD in revenue, a 1 billion USD valuation, at least 40% of revenue from offline stores, 40% from women and children, and 30% from Southeast Asia and the US (Coolmate). When it announced the Series C in November 2025, it packaged the strategy into three branches: Go Women, Go Offline, Go Global (VnExpress).
A vision with numbers gives investors a yardstick to check each year, and gives the team a marker for where they stand. The socks on Amazon give the Go Global branch a piece of evidence, something a plan cannot produce on its own.
The risks: a rented channel and a stretched positioning
The first risk in short: ranking, fees and rules on Amazon are Amazon's to set. We analyzed this in Meta blocks ads that lead to TikTok: stop building funnels on rented land, and its lesson applies fully to an Amazon storefront.
The second risk deserves more discussion. Around 2022, Coolmate's CEO said there would be no stores and no women's clothing “from now until 2025”, because “women need a store to browse and try things on” (24hmoney). In early 2025, Coolmate announced a women's activewear line focused on leggings and sports bras (Vietnambiz). In March 2026, its first store opened at Aeon Hanoi (a mall run by the Japanese retail group) after seven years of online-only sales. One reason the CEO gave is that women often won't buy workout clothes without trying them on (Vietnambiz).
The 2022 logic still holds; only the conclusion flipped. Women's clothing needs stores, and stores bring rent, staff and inventory at every location. A target of at least 40% offline revenue means far more fixed costs than an online-only model. Meanwhile the original positioning (menswear basics, bought online, 60-day returns) now shares space with women's activewear, mall stores and a storefront in the US.
Vietnamese has a proverb: “Better to master one trade than dabble in nine.” A company aiming for a 1 billion USD valuation can hardly stay a men's online shop, so expanding is understandable. When Kenh14, a Vietnamese youth-focused news site, asked how Coolmate would keep its identity while moving into women's wear and stores, the CEO answered: “The essence of a startup is making mistakes and fixing them” (Kenh14). The question we would put back: after three expansion branches, will the original male customer still recognize why he chose Coolmate?
The timelines deserve some caution too. The IPO was once mentioned for 2025 (Người Quan Sát), then in early 2025 it became 2026 (Vietnambiz). The 2026 IPO and the 2030 targets are announced plans. Treat them as promises to investors, not results.
Which product should a Vietnamese brand take abroad
From Coolmate's case, 126Insights draws three criteria for the product that opens a new market:
- It is an everyday item that people rebuy on a cycle.
- It can be compared on the listing page at a glance: price, pack size, reviews.
- It depends little on sizing and trying on, so a stranger dares to click buy.
Sequence matters too. Coolmate sold online for seven years before opening a store, and it opened when it had a clear product reason. If you are planning to take products abroad around 11/11 (the 11 November sale day Vietnamese shoppers treat as a major shopping event) or Black Friday, sell a test batch before building a whole system: one product, one channel, one market.
Something you can do today: open your product catalog and strike out every item that customers would need to know who you are before buying. Whatever remains, if anything, is where to start.