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 just use the “Made O’Meter” app and scan products before buying them, so I don’t end up buying American.
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.
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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”.
Ok, but fuck nestle.
Also most salomons are made here in vietnam. Weirdly they’re even more expensive and don’t come with a 2 year warranty so I have absolutely no idea who is buying their stuff in Vietnam.
You’re right, and my directory entry was too loose about it. Fixed today.
Most Salomon volume is built in Asia, Vietnam included, exactly as you say. What surprised me was the exception: the automated ASF 4.0 factory in Ardoix that builds select models 100% in France. That’s a small slice of the range, notable because it exists at all, not because it’s the norm. The entry now carries the “specific lines” badge and says plainly that the bulk of the range is still made in Asia.
On Nestlé: no argument here, see my reply upthread. The list answers where something is made, not whether the company deserves your money.
Salomon shoes say where they were made on the tag, but you can never trust it.
Sounds like Salomon are playing a trick where they imply 100% of all their shoes are made in France, but really it’s only 100% of the shoe you’re looking at that is.
I have bought many jackets and shoes from Salomon, but it has never been made in Europe. And I saw a while ago that they are owned by a Chinese company.
Your experience checks out. Nearly everything Salomon sells, jackets included, is made in Asia. The French factory is real but builds select shoe models only; my entry was too loose about that until this thread, and now says so plainly.
On ownership: Salomon belongs to Amer Sports, originally Finnish, and Amer’s largest shareholder since the 2019 buyout is Anta Sports from China (PromKingJosh has the numbers upthread, around 44%, plus a small Tencent stake). So not wholly Chinese-owned, but Chinese-anchored, yes.
The directory deliberately answers one narrow question, where the product is manufactured, and not who owns the brand. Both matter when you decide what to buy; they’re just different facts, and blurring them is how “European brand” got so fuzzy in the first place. The same came up with Birkenstock upthread, majority-owned by a US fund since 2021. Showing ownership as its own field is on my list for exactly that reason.
Two corrections, both from this thread.
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The disclosure below says “no tracking”. That was wrong. The newsletter signup form was a beehiiv embed sitting on every page, and inside its iframe beehiiv loaded Google Tag Manager, a PerimeterX script and Google Fonts. browle’s own code never had any of it, but that distinction doesn’t help you as a reader — it loaded either way. Fixed the same day: the form now loads only if you click it, nothing third-party runs on a normal page view, and the privacy page names all of it outright.
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The SIGG line above is wrong. They still run their own factory in Frauenfeld and mark Swiss-made products with the red Swiss cross — the range is split, not moved abroad. It’s now a scoped listing on browle instead of sitting on the not-listed page.
Both were caught by commenters here, which is roughly the best argument for posting this stuff in public. Leaving the original text standing rather than quietly rewriting it.
Leaving the original text standing rather than quietly rewriting it.
Maybe cross it out and add the correct information afterward? That way the original can be seen, but if someone doesn’t scroll down to the comments, they still get correct info.
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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.
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.
Both true, and worth stating plainly: Birkenstock has been majority-owned by L Catterton, a US private equity firm, since 2021, and beyerdynamic was sold to Cosonic — a Chinese OEM that builds headphones for Philips, JBL and Beats — in June 2025 for a reported €122m.
What browle checks is where a product is manufactured, not who owns the brand. Those are genuinely different questions and I should be clearer about that on the site. On the manufacturing side both still hold: Birkenstock’s Görlitz site is still being expanded, and the Cosonic deal was explicitly structured around keeping the Heilbronn production and the “Handmade in Heilbronn” marking, with the existing management staying in place.
Whether that survives the next few years is exactly what a directory like this should re-check rather than assume — every entry carries a “last verified” date for that reason, and this is a good argument for showing ownership as its own field instead of leaving people to find it out in a comment section. Noted, and thank you.
On quality post-2021: that I can’t verify, so I won’t pretend to.
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.
This is marvelous, thank you for the hard work!
There’s a site that just came to my attention, worseonpurpose.com, that might appreciate this information.
Hadn’t seen it — thanks, that’s a good neighbour project. Different question than mine (how it’s built to fail vs. where it’s built), but the same instinct.
That site blocks users on VPNs.
Loaded for me on Proton.
Not PIA, as that’s what I use.
Will you continue to add more brands and regularly check where they are made? Maybe you can add a field for suggestions of new brands?
Both things from this thread are now live.
The suggestion form: browle.com/en/suggest (also /de and /fr). Brand name plus an evidence link is all it takes, no account needed, and every suggestion goes through the same verification as any listed brand. You asked for exactly this, so it seemed wrong to keep pointing people at an email address.
And ownership is now its own field on brand pages, separate from the manufacturing facts. The first batch is the cases this thread raised: Birkenstock (L Catterton, 62.4% per their SEC annual report), Salomon’s parent Amer Sports (Anta largest shareholder at 41.7%), Beyerdynamic (Cosonic), SIGG (Haers), plus Lowa (Tecnica Group) and Duralex, which went the other direction and became an employee cooperative in 2024. Each dated and sourced, and the page says plainly: ownership is shown for context, listing stays based only on where products are made.
Thanks for the push. Tips from this thread built most of what shipped this week.
Yes to both, that’s the plan.
Every entry shows a “last verified” date, and re-checks update it. In practice threads like this one are the fastest correction mechanism: three fixes from this thread went into the data the same day, including the SIGG scope and Sennheiser’s Tullamore factory.
For suggestions, contact@browle.com works today and goes straight into the review queue. A proper suggestion form on the site is on the roadmap. Suggestions only get listed once there’s a public source for where the products are made, which is also why some famous names sit on the “not listed” page instead.
Hum? You 've linked the sources for the 10, but you mention over 600. Do you have the list somewhere public, or even a repo, for issues/corrections (maybe not Github, because affiliations)?
And yeah, things like this would be great as a nonprofit, maybe even funded by national consumer protection agencies.
The full list is the site itself: all 631 are on browle.com, and the evidence link sits on every entry’s page — the ten in the post were just the ones that made good reading. Categories, countries and search are the ways in.
There’s no open repo right now, and corrections don’t need one (or any account): since this week there’s a form at browle.com/en/suggest. It works for new brands and for “this entry is wrong” alike — an evidence link is the one thing I really need. This thread alone produced several corrections and two shipped features, so the channel demonstrably works.
On nonprofit: it’s a one-person project funded by disclosed affiliate links on some outbound buttons — the disclosure is in the footer, and listings are never affected by it; that bar is public on the site. Public or consumer-protection funding is a kind thought, but I’d rather keep earning trust with sources first and think about structures later.
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.
Hell yeah, thanks for the research!
On electronics, any recommendations? I made a list here…
Electronics is browle’s thinnest category by a wide margin, and it’s the one where verification is hardest — “designed in” and “assembled in” do most of the marketing work in that industry, and very few makers will name the plant.
I’ll go through your list properly. The ones worth flagging to me are any where the manufacturer names the actual site rather than the country: that’s the difference between something I can list and something I can’t.
I mostly listed whatever is owned, established in, or manufactured in Europe.
Thank you - that sounds like a lot of ground work that most people don’t know how to even start, but can benefit from.
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.
Both of your tips checked out, and both are in the directory now. Thanks.
Arcos: their own pages document the Albacete plants, knives since 1734, around 75,000 pieces a day. Listed.
And you’re right about SIGG, which means my post above overstates it. Their Frauenfeld factory still makes the aluminium bottles, and SIGG marks the Swiss-made ones with a red Swiss cross; other lines come from outside suppliers. So it’s not “no longer made in Switzerland”, it’s “check for the cross”. The entry is scoped that way now.
Arcos knives, which are excellent, and great value, ARE made in Albacete, Spain. 10 year warranty, BTW. Not life, but not shabby.
You’re right and I got this one wrong — thank you.
I re-checked SIGG’s own pages. Their Swiss Made page refers to “our factory in Frauenfeld” and says the red Swiss cross logo “identifies products that are manufactured in Switzerland”, with the origin stated on the product or the packaging. Their Swissness page says they keep investing in the Frauenfeld factory, while also working with outside manufacturers “regardless of where they are produced”.
So the accurate picture is a split range — part still made in Frauenfeld, part not — and not “no longer made in Switzerland”, which is what browle’s not-listed page says and what I repeated in this post. That’s overstated and I’m correcting it; a split range is what the site handles as a scoped entry, which is how it should have been filed.
Arcos: noted, and it came up twice in this thread — Albacete, stated on their own site. It goes in the queue.
