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) (Scope correction in the EDIT below.)
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 and since this thread: no third-party code on a normal page view. The “not listed” page is there too. Corrections very welcome — the evidence link is on every entry.
EDIT (26 July): I wrote in the correction comment that I’d leave the original text standing. With a third correction now in, that stops being honesty and starts being a post that’s wrong in three places, so the corrections are in the body itself: wrong lines struck through, nothing deleted.
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“No tracking” was wrong. The site’s own code never had trackers, but the newsletter form was a beehiiv embed that loaded Google Tag Manager and other third-party scripts inside its iframe on every page. Since 25 July the form loads only if you click it; a normal page view runs no third-party code. Details in the comment linked above.
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The SIGG line was wrong. They still run their own factory in Frauenfeld and mark the Swiss-made bottles with a red Swiss cross; other lines come from outside suppliers. “Check for the cross”, not “no longer made in Switzerland”.
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Salomon needed scoping. The French factory is real, but it builds select models; most of the range is still made in Asia. The directory entry now says so plainly.
All three came from commenters here. The count in the disclosure was 628 when I posted; it’s 631 today, and three of those are tips from this thread.
I don’t think it matters where they are physiclally made. What matters is where the money is going.
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:
Fair, and I don’t want the list read as an endorsement.
browle answers one narrow question — where is this actually manufactured — and deliberately doesn’t rank companies on ethics, because that’s a judgement you’d want to make yourself and we’d almost certainly draw the lines differently. Nespresso is in there because the manufacturing claim is unusually verifiable, not because I think Nestlé is a good corporate citizen. The baby-formula history and the water extraction are real and well documented.
“Made here” and “behaves well” are separate axes, and a directory that quietly merged them would be doing the same thing I’m complaining about with “designed in”.
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 :)
You’re right, and thanks for catching it — I’ve fixed it rather than argue about it.
What was happening: browle’s own code has no GTM and no analytics cookies (PostHog, EU-hosted, cookieless, no person profiles). But the newsletter signup form was a beehiiv embed sitting on every page, and inside that iframe beehiiv loads googletagmanager.com/gtm.js (container GTM-WJXL7FH) plus a PerimeterX script and Google Fonts, with a
__cf_bmcookie on top. So “no tracking” was false for anyone who loaded any page, whether or not they cared about the newsletter. My mistake was treating “we don’t add trackers” and “no trackers load” as the same sentence.As of today the form only loads when you click the subscribe button. On a normal page view nothing loads from beehiiv or Google at all — the one remaining external request is EU-hosted PostHog, which the privacy page has always described. That page now also names GTM, PerimeterX and the
__cf_bmcookie outright instead of leaving them undisclosed: https://browle.com/en/privacyIf you check again and something still fires that shouldn’t, tell me and I’ll fix that too.
Are you an LLM? The way you write is suspicious.
Hi asudox. No, I am not an LLM. But I did use LLM for reviewing my posts (especially because I am not English-native speaker). But I fully get your point and I will make sure moving forward to keep the LLM review to a strict minimum, and will put more focus on my own, natural language :) Thanks a lot for pointing it out to me! Much appreciated.
Do you use LLMs to review your text or completely (re)write them?
All this makes me wonder if maybe I should establish a store that only sells European-made/European-owned products… that way, the visitor needs not figure it all out.
If you do, the hardest part is deciding what counts. Owned in Europe, founded in Europe and manufactured in Europe give you three very different lists, and a lot of brands only make it into one of them. I settled on production location as the only thing that decides a listing, and put ownership on the page as a separate fact, because people kept reading one as the other. Everything I have is public with the source on each entry, so lift whatever is useful.
It’s more of a thought experiment as sadly I have no experience with making a store, but I would personally be inclined to categorise them by product first, and label each of them on the shelf.
I’d not go for where it is founded, rather focusing on the supply chain.
I feel like these are most relevant, in no particular order:
a. Owned by Europe (parent company is especially important)
b. Manufactured in Europe
c. Based/Hosted in EuropeI’m not sure which one is more significant. Motorola for example is US-based but owned by a Chinese company, so ultimately, who has more influence on their products?
‘Europe’ here denotes EU & Schengen, although I’d probably be inclined to include other European countries as well if they have a good human rights’ record.
If there’s a lot of choice, I’d prioritise worker-owned cooperatives and those companies/countries with good labour rights and social progress.
That said, people will be drawn more easily to European products, I feel, if it is also more affordable, so perhaps a membership could be included that gives you a discount. But that’s something most companies have anyways.
