More and more brands are starting the question the long-term viability of their overseas manufacturing facilities, and Europe currently offers new manufacturing opportunities to shorten lead times, reduce costs, and increase quality for one or more of their product ranges.

To explore this potential opportunity, Outdoor Sports Valley created a working group made up of member companies with the goal of taking the first step to identify European clothing manufacturers. During the first quarter 2018, we launched a research project to index and qualify a broad panel of European production facilities.

For this first step in an ongoing effort, we focused on identifying technical textile manufacturing facilities in Europe, especially those capable of making waterproof-breathable apparel.

To view the results and the database, log into the OSV Member Area (Innovation & Sustainability / Tools and Info) to download:
>> Country overviews (in English) where potential manufacturing facilities are located,
>> A comparison table of the manufacturing capacity and ability in each country, as well as the information sources that allowed us to make our evaluation,
>> The database of European technical textile manufacturers that we identified.

We sent a questionnaire to the database of already pre-qualified facilities in order to gather more precise information on their production capacity (volume), certifications, etc. For your information, only a very small sample of the database replied to our inquiry.

Following this first stage of the project on waterproof-breathable technical textiles, the working group will begin the second stage this fall to research the potential manufacturing facilities for in Europe for a different category of outdoor sports apparel.

As an OSV member, if you have any questions or needs regarding this topic, please feel free to contact the executive team to join the working group.