News

11 February 2026

South-East Europe: The Serious Sourcing Alternative EU Brands Should Consider

For the past two decades, “sourcing in China” became the default answer to a simple question: where can we produce at scale, at a competitive unit price, with enough supplier choice to keep innovation moving? That playbook still works in specific categories, especially when you need extremely high volumes, highly specialized clusters, or deeply integrated component ecosystems.

However, EU companies sourcing consumer goods, packaging, textiles, furniture, home and lifestyle products, or many types of industrial components have learned a hard lesson since 2020: the unit price you negotiate at the factory gate is only one line in the cost of serving your market.

What matters to a European buyer today is the full landed reality. That includes transport volatility, transit time uncertainty, cash tied up in inventory, regulatory risk, supply continuity, reputational exposure, and the ability to respond quickly when demand shifts or compliance requirements change.

This is exactly why South-East Europe (SEE), including the Western Balkans and EU-adjacent manufacturing hubs like North Macedonia, has moved from “backup option” to “strategic sourcing region” for many European companies. The region combines geographic proximity, improving industrial capacity, EU-facing trade frameworks, and a business culture built around flexibility and relationship-based execution. When you measure the total cost and total risk, SEE often competes far better than most procurement teams expect.

At Immoricon, we work with vetted production partners across South-East Europe and manage sourcing end-to-end for EU buyers. In this article, we will take a critical, practical view of why SEE deserves to be treated as a serious alternative to China for a growing set of product categories, and what decision-makers should look at when they evaluate the switch.

Why the sourcing conversation in Europe changed after 2020

The last few years did not “break” global trade, but they exposed how fragile long-distance supply chains become when multiple variables move at once.

Shipping became the most visible shock. When routes are stable, Asia–Europe freight can feel like a predictable background cost. When routes are disrupted, freight stops being a line item and becomes a strategic risk. The Red Sea disruption that began in late 2023 is a good example because it affected transit times and rates on Asia–Europe routes, and it reminded procurement teams that a single corridor can influence delivery reliability across entire product lines. The International Transport Forum documented sharp freight rate increases on the Far East–Europe route after the crisis began. Recent reporting by Reuters has also highlighted how re-routing and later partial resumption of Red Sea services affects transit times, freight capacity, and port congestion dynamics.

At the same time, regulation in the EU tightened in ways that directly touch sourcing decisions. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive entered into force in July 2024 and pushed companies in scope to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts across their value chains. Separately, the EU Forced Labour Regulation entered into force in 2024 and introduces a ban on products made with forced labour, with application beginning in December 2027.

When you combine logistics volatility with expanding compliance obligations, “distance” becomes more than kilometers. It becomes an exposure multiplier.

That is the context in which SEE sourcing makes sense. Proximity reduces the number of variables that can derail a delivery. Regional production simplifies audits and supplier development. Faster transport enables tighter inventory planning. In many categories, these advantages outweigh small differences in unit manufacturing cost.

Speed to market: lead times that match how Europe actually sells

Europe is not one market. It is a collection of markets with different seasons, sales calendars, retail expectations, and regulatory environments. The brands that win are the brands that can react quickly without compromising quality.

SEE sourcing aligns well with that reality because transit times by road to EU destinations are measured in days, not weeks. In practical terms, that supports three strategic shifts:

1. First, buyers can move from “forecasting far ahead” to “forecasting with feedback.” Instead of placing a single large seasonal order months in advance, they can place an initial order, test sell-through, and replenish based on real demand.
2. Second, product development cycles become faster. Sampling, adjustments, packaging changes, and compliance tweaks are easier when the factory is a short flight away and communication can include frequent on-site work.
3. Third, late-stage customization becomes realistic. Many EU brands want variations in labeling, language versions, bundle configurations, or retailer-specific packaging. With long-distance sourcing, late changes often trigger delays or extra cost. With regional production, those changes are more manageable, especially when the supplier is accustomed to the EU retail environment.

The European Parliament has discussed post-COVID supply chain strategies and highlights how reduced lead times and increased flexibility are among the drivers pushing firms toward reshoring or nearshoring. Even if you do not “reshore” into the EU itself, SEE often delivers many of the same benefits with a broader supplier base and competitive cost structure.

Reliability and resilience: fewer failure points, more control

Supply chains fail at the edges where you have the least visibility and the least control. Long-distance sourcing adds more edges: more carriers, more transshipment points, more customs interfaces, more handovers, and often more subcontracting layers.

SEE sourcing reduces those edges. Shorter routes mean fewer handovers and fewer points where a delay can compound. Regional time zones make communication immediate. When something goes wrong, it can be addressed within hours, often with a site visit.

Resilience is also about diversification. Many EU companies learned that over-concentration in one geography creates systemic risk. South-East Europe offers a practical way to diversify without adding extreme complexity. The region includes multiple countries with overlapping capabilities. A diversified SEE sourcing strategy can include, for example, parallel suppliers in North Macedonia and neighboring Balkan countries, or a mix of Western Balkan and EU member state capacity where appropriate.

In addition, the logistics backbone in and around SEE has improved significantly, and benchmarking tools like the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index have expanded their focus on shipment speed and corridor lead times, reflecting how central “time” has become in modern trade performance. The key point for EU buyers is that regional sourcing reduces the distance between problem detection and problem solving.

Trade and customs: how EU-adjacent frameworks can improve competitiveness

Trade rules are often treated as paperwork, but for many categories they influence margin.

A practical advantage of sourcing in the EU neighborhood is that preferential trade arrangements and origin frameworks can reduce friction and, in some cases, reduce duty exposure, depending on product classification and origin rules.

South-East Europe is integrated into a dense network of agreements and origin cumulation mechanisms. The EU’s Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) cumulation system is designed to enable diagonal cumulation of origin across a wide zone that includes the EU and the Western Balkans, among others. For buyers, this matters because it can expand sourcing options for inputs while still supporting preferential origin outcomes when the legal conditions are met.

North Macedonia, specifically, has a Stabilisation and Association Agreement framework with the EU, which supports trade integration and includes provisions connected to proofs of origin such as EUR.1 movement certificates in the relevant customs context. In practice, what EU importers care about is that the supplier can provide correct origin documentation where applicable, and that the documentation is issued reliably.

This is an area where experienced sourcing partners add real value. Origin, cumulation, and customs documentation are technical. When managed correctly, they reduce delays at the border and support predictable landed cost planning. When managed poorly, they create expensive surprises.

Capability and quality: SEE is no longer “low-cost Europe,” it is specialized Europe

One outdated assumption still floats around procurement conversations: SEE equals basic manufacturing. That image does not match today’s reality.

Across the Balkans and the wider South-East European region, you will find factories that have built competence in:

• textile and home goods manufacturing with EU-facing quality systems,
• furniture and wood processing with mature craftsmanship traditions,
• metalworking and components for industrial supply chains,
• packaging and printing capabilities aligned with EU retail demands,
• contract manufacturing that is used to shorter runs and high variation.

The region’s strength is often in mid-complexity manufacturing where process discipline matters and where the ability to execute consistently matters more than chasing the absolute lowest unit price.

This is also where buyer experience improves. Communication is faster. Engineering changes are handled with fewer layers. Sampling does not take months. Quality issues are easier to investigate because you can be on-site quickly, inspect production batches, and run corrective actions in real time.

At Immoricon, we treat quality control as a system rather than a final check. That means on-site verification, partner audits, and process discipline that matches the customer’s category and risk level. The benefit for EU buyers is simple: fewer surprises, less rework, and fewer costly delays.

The textile advantage in South-East Europe: why bedding and home comfort products make economic sense regionally

Few product categories expose the weaknesses of long-distance sourcing as clearly as textiles for home comfort, especially pillows, duvets, mattress toppers, mattresses, and related bedding products. These items sit at the intersection of three challenging factors:

• they are bulky relative to their unit value,
• they are sensitive to quality perception,
• and they are heavily affected by seasonality and demand swings in the European market.

From a pure logistics perspective, bedding products punish distance.

A pillow or duvet consumes a disproportionate amount of container space compared to its manufacturing cost. When freight rates rise, or when routes are disrupted, transport can quickly become the dominant cost driver rather than the production itself. In South-East Europe, this equation changes fundamentally. Short road transit times to EU warehouses allow manufacturers and buyers to optimize loading, ship more frequently, and avoid the need to “over-order” just to justify a container. When the cost per cubic meter is analyzed at landed level, regional production often competes directly with, or outperforms, Far East sourcing for these categories.

Lead time sensitivity is another decisive factor.

Bedding demand in Europe is closely tied to retail calendars, promotions, weather patterns, and hospitality cycles. Long lead times force buyers to commit to volumes and designs far in advance, increasing the risk of slow-moving stock or missed sales opportunities. Production in South-East Europe supports a fundamentally different planning model. Shorter production and transit cycles allow brands to replenish based on real sell-through data, adjust product mixes mid-season, and respond faster to changes in consumer preferences, such as shifts toward different fillings, firmness levels, or fabric compositions.

Quality control is also particularly critical in bedding.

Products like pillows, duvets, and mattresses are tactile, comfort-driven, and closely associated with consumer trust. Issues such as inconsistent filling weight, uneven stitching, fabric defects, or packaging damage quickly translate into returns and negative reviews. Regional sourcing enables closer oversight of these details. On-site inspections, frequent sampling, and direct collaboration with production teams make it easier to maintain consistency across batches and to correct issues before they reach the market. This level of control is much harder to achieve when production is separated by long distances and multiple intermediaries.

Another often overlooked advantage is material sourcing alignment.

Many bedding products rely on raw materials that are already available within Europe or its immediate neighborhood, such as certain textiles, foams, fibers, and packaging materials. When these inputs are sourced regionally and assembled regionally, the supply chain becomes shorter and more predictable. This reduces dependency on global raw material flows and lowers exposure to disruptions that originate outside the European market.

For private label retailers and mid-sized brands, flexibility around minimum order quantities is particularly valuable in the textile category. Collections change frequently, and shelf space is limited. South-East European manufacturers are generally more open to smaller production runs, mixed assortments, and phased deliveries. This allows buyers to test new designs or specifications without committing to excessive volumes, while still maintaining competitive pricing at landed level.

In practice, many European buyers discover that bedding and home textile products are among the fastest categories to justify a nearshoring move. When transport efficiency, working capital, quality control, and responsiveness are evaluated together, South-East Europe offers a combination that aligns closely with how these products are sold and consumed in the EU. For companies looking to reduce risk while improving operational agility, textiles are often the category where the strategic value of regional sourcing becomes immediately visible.

A realistic critique: when China still wins, and how to decide intelligently

An authoritative sourcing strategy is honest about trade-offs.

China often remains the best option when you need extremely high volumes, when your product relies on dense component ecosystems, when tooling and specialized equipment are deeply embedded in Chinese clusters, or when the supplier landscape in SEE is simply too limited for your specific technical requirements.

SEE becomes compelling when your business values speed, flexibility, inventory efficiency, and controllable risk. It becomes particularly strong when:

• freight and volume weight make transport a big part of landed cost,
• your product range changes frequently,
• your customers punish late deliveries,
• you operate in categories where compliance documentation is becoming heavier,
• you want to diversify sourcing without moving production outside Europe’s economic orbit.

The decision should be made with a disciplined comparison model. If you want to test SEE seriously, you can run a “dual sourcing pilot” with two or three SKUs, compare landed cost, compare lead times, track defects, and measure working capital tied up per unit sold. Procurement teams that do this often discover that the operational gains of near sourcing show up quickly in financial performance.

Why Immoricon exists in this shift

Sourcing in South-East Europe is powerful, but it still requires local knowledge. Supplier qualification, capability matching, contract discipline, and on-site quality systems determine whether nearshoring delivers value or becomes another supplier management headache.

Our role at Immoricon is to make SEE sourcing feel as reliable as domestic sourcing while keeping it cost-competitive. We build and maintain production partnerships across the region, manage audits and quality control, and handle the practical details that protect EU buyers from disruptions and surprises.

For many companies, the shift to SEE is not about replacing China entirely. It is about building a supply chain that fits the European market as it exists today: faster, more regulated, more volatile, and more transparent.

If your current sourcing model still depends on long lead times and large bets placed months in advance, the risk profile has changed. South-East Europe gives European companies a way to shorten the distance between decision and delivery, and that advantage compounds over time.

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