Blog

Articles and notes

Long-form notes on sourcing, vetting factories, and running production with Portuguese clothing manufacturers.

How to Move Your Fashion Production from Asia to Europe: The Complete 2026 Guide
Matias Santos, Founder
Most brands treat this as a binary choice: stay in Asia, or move to Europe. That framing is exactly why most brands never actually move. The founders who successfully make this shift run both supply chains in parallel first, shifting 20 to 30 percent of volume to a European source before Asia's share shrinks on its own. This guide covers why 2026 specifically is the year this stopped being optional for many brands, what the real landed-cost comparison looks like once freight, duty, and lead time are included, and the practical step-by-step of running a first European production order without disrupting the supply chain you already have.
Jul 4, 2026
The EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Clothing: What It Actually Means If You Are Not a Large Company
Matias Santos, Founder
Since February 2026, a claim has been circulating in DTC founder communities: the EU just banned destroying unsold clothes, so every brand selling into Europe needs to fix this now. It's not quite right. The rule genuinely doesn't bind most independent brands directly, the size threshold is real and specific. But there are four concrete reasons an independent brand should understand it anyway, and none of them involve waiting for the threshold to eventually apply. This guide covers exactly who the ban applies to, what counts as destruction under the EU's specific definition (it's stricter than most coverage suggests), and why a low-MOQ production model is already structurally ahead of the problem this regulation exists to solve.

Jul 4, 2026

The Portuguese Textile Industry Map: What's Made Where, and How to Find It

Matias Santos, Founder

Most brands ask "which factories in Portugal" before they ask "where in Portugal." The two questions lead to very different answers. Portugal's textile industry is not distributed evenly across the country. It sits in a specific corridor in the northwest, with distinct towns that have specialised in distinct production types over generations. A brand making seamless activewear and a brand making heritage knitwear are looking for different towns, not just different factories. This is the geographic map that should be the first thing any brand reads before approaching Portuguese manufacturing.

Jun 27, 2026

Knitwear Manufacturing in Portugal: The Complete Guide for Brands

Matias Santos

Knitwear is not one category. A seamless sports bra and a fully fashioned merino jumper are both knitwear, but they require different machines, different factories, different yarns, and different minimums. Most brands searching for a knitwear manufacturer in Portugal arrive without this distinction clear, search for a "knitwear factory," and spend weeks finding out the hard way that the factory they contacted makes jumpers, not seamless tubes. This guide covers the three knitwear production types, where Portugal genuinely fits each one, real MOQ and price ranges, yarn sourcing, and what a knitwear brief needs that a cut-and-sew brief doesn't.

Jun 27, 2026

What Clothing Factories Need to Quote Your Order (The Complete Production Brief)

Matias Santos, Founder

Most brands spend weeks on factory outreach before realising the problem was never finding factories. It was not having a complete brief ready before they reached out. A factory triages your enquiry in about thirty seconds. If the information they need to price your product is not already there, your message gets deprioritised behind every enquiry that can be answered without asking three clarifying questions first. This article covers exactly what belongs in a complete production brief, why each component is there, and how NovaSupplier uses the same structure to match your project to the right Portuguese manufacturers without the outreach process.

Jun 27, 2026

How to Tell If a European Company Is a Manufacturer or Wholesaler (Before You Commit)

Matias Santos, Founder

How to tell if a European supplier is actually a manufacturer or a wholesaler before you commit money and months to the relationship. This guide covers business registry lookups, VAT and EORI checks, physical verification signals, and the specific questions to ask on a call that a trading company can never answer convincingly, no matter how polished their website looks.

Jun 25, 2026

How to Move Your Fashion Production from Asia to Europe: The Complete 2026 Guide

The EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Clothing: What It Actually Means If You Are Not a Large Company

The Portuguese Textile Industry Map: What's Made Where, and How to Find It

Knitwear Manufacturing in Portugal: The Complete Guide for Brands

What Clothing Factories Need to Quote Your Order (The Complete Production Brief)

How to Tell If a European Company Is a Manufacturer or Wholesaler (Before You Commit)