Over the last weeks I went through 600+ brands that get recommended as “European alternatives” and tried to verify where their products are actually made — factory pages, press visits, certifications. Some things genuinely surprised me:
1. Birkenstock really is made in Germany — over 95%. Their largest production site is in Görlitz, Saxony, and they’re expanding it. (source)
2. Every single Nespresso capsule sold worldwide is made in Switzerland. All of them — roasted, ground and sealed in one of three Swiss factories. (source)
3. The Norwegian outdoor brands mostly don’t produce in Norway — but they built their own factories in the Baltics. Norrøna runs its own factory in Lithuania, Devold makes over 90% of its wool clothing at its Lithuanian plant, and Aclima knits its merino in Estonia. Still EU, still their own factories — but not what the marketing photos imply. (Norrøna, Devold, Aclima)
4. About 85% of Beyerdynamic headphones are still handmade in Heilbronn, Germany. In an industry that moved to Asia decades ago. (source)
5. Salomon opened a fully automated sneaker factory in the French Alps to build shoes 100% in France. Automation is what makes European sneaker production viable again. (source)
6. The canvas sneakers you’d guess are the most “outsourced” product are the opposite: Novesta has run the same Slovak factory since 1939. (source)
The pattern I keep seeing: “European brand” and “made in Europe” are completely different claims. The ones that really produce here are usually loud about the specific factory — the vague ones (“designed in…”, “European quality”) usually aren’t.
And the flip side, which felt just as important: some famous “European” names didn’t hold up. The SIGG bottle is no longer made in Switzerland; the Berkel slicer — an Italian icon — is now built in India under a “design made in Italy” line; Teufel is designed in Berlin but produced in China. I put those on a public “not listed” page with the reason for each, because quietly leaving them out felt dishonest.
Disclosure: this is my own project — I put all 628 verified brands with their sources into a free directory, browle.com, EN/DE/FR, no ads, no tracking. The “not listed” page is there too. Corrections very welcome — the evidence link is on every entry.
Fun fact, because of Nespresso, Switzerland is the biggest producer of coffee worldwide.
Barely any coffee is roasted where it is grown, so although it sure is a fun fact it’s worth mentioning countries like Brasil or Ethiopia are very far from coming second or third.
Arcos knifes are still supposedly made in Spain.
When I was buying a SIGG bottle the filter on the page let me search for EU made bottles. At least some models are still supposedly made in Germany Switzerland.
Arcos knives, which are excellent, and great value, ARE made in Albacete, Spain. 10 year warranty, BTW. Not life, but not shabby.
Espresso capsules may be made in Switzerland, but Nestlé is one of the more ethically problematic corporations, responsible for unethical baby-milk promotion in the developing world, aggressive water privatisation and other predatory practices. If it was a choice between them and a random American company, I’d choose the latter.
Nestle CEO on water:
There’s a site that just came to my attention, worseonpurpose.com, that might appreciate this information.
claude cream will be the next twitter blue of the web and im already sick of looking at it.
also please dont say there is “no tracking” if you are injecting google tag manager :/good luck with the project though :)
I don’t know about all of them, but of the ones I’m familiar with, Birkenstock and Beyerdynamic, neither is really European anymore. Birkenstock sold a majority stake to L Catterton in 2021. It’s a US American private equity firm. Beyerdynamic was sold to Cosonic in 2025, a Chinese company.
From what I’ve heard Birkenstocks have gone down in quality massively since then even if they’re mostly still produced in Germany. I don’t know how Beyerdynamics has fared since.
Salomon Group is also owned by Finnish Amer sports, which in turn is 44% owned by Chinese Anta Sports and 4.5% by Tencent.
Hell yeah, thanks for the research!
On electronics, any recommendations? I made a list here…
Thank you - that sounds like a lot of ground work that most people don’t know how to even start, but can benefit from.
Do you take suggested additions? I like Fjallraven stuff, but they don’t manufacture in Sweden, sadly.
Fjällräven is a lifestyle fashion company nowadays unless you go for the top shelf stuff.
Expand on this? You don’t like their winter gear?
Not much to expand on and it’s not any sort of shocking surprise either.
They still have a premium segment that is among the best, but what used to be affordable great quality outdoors gear is nowadays overpriced urban fashion lifestyle branding for clothes and bags and stuff that are made for looks rather than be in the wild.
An unsurprising and sadly common progression when the founder leaves the business to the kids and family that aren’t emotionally invested but want to cash in enough for everyone that holds a share of the family business.
That’s the info I was looking for. I still thought they made quality stuff, but I never found them to be affordable. I didn’t know all that about the founder and the kids and so on. That’s unfortunate ☹️.
Their quality gear for enthusiasts is still great, but the reason they are so big and common and known in Sweden is because they were a great bang for the buck in the family price range. That’s the money maker where they cut all the corners now when they are an international lifestyle fashion brand.
It’s happened with numerous outdoors brands the last ten-twenty years that they shifted ownership and target demographic and let go of what made their reputation in the first place.
Then again, arguably it’s the evolutionary nature of commerce and capitalism that good things become what they set out to challenge and new small startups take their place.
Good work. I will check it during the weekend.
Please ditch the clickbait title, it’s quite annoying.
Btw yea, those labels like IKEA’s “designed in Sweden” are openly racist, who tf cares where something was designed, don’t try to Europe-wash your outsourced production…
Great work, OP! 👏 You have also now made me even more happy about wearing Birkenstock sandals this summer. 😊
As for footwear in general, there seem to be some decenr brands in Portugal and Spain. Maybe you have them covered on the list as well. 😊
This — is — AI — slop.
Is it though? Some people, myself included, actually use emdashes, though I’m usually just lazy and use a hyphen instead.
Or is something beyond the emdashes tipping you off?
When being lazy, an em dash should be replaced with two hyphens.
But that’s two keystrokes when one somewhat suffices. One is lazier than two!
Sane people use n-dashes. Fight me.
The en dash is the neglected middle child of the dash family. It likely appreciates being noticed at all.
I agree, m-dashes are too long, but afaik in US-English they are the norm (but not with spaces around it, which imho makes it even worse).
I would say – interjecting like this – flows much better than—interjecting like this—in the middle of text.
While some people would insist on a strict difference in the usage between en and em dash, like so many things the lines have become blurred.
Though to some this is “incorrect” usage, I like the space-endash-space visually as a replacement for (bracketed) text, especially when dealing with a longer “aside” within a larger block of text.
As however those exact same people would almost certainly tell me that “language evolves” and to stop being a “prescriptivist” when insisting that you can’t just use words incorrectly and insist that the reader keep up with your new meaning, they can get bent.
I like the way it looks, and it reads well for the overwhelming majority of people.
It has a clickbait title, but they might have used an LLM to clean up text
