Overview:
The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
Rules:
Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. No direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments.
Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:
Include a disclaimer at the bottom of the post if you're affiliated with the recommendation.
Feddit.uk's instance rules apply:
Benefits of Buying Local:
local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.
Related Communities:
Buy Local:
Buying and Selling:
[email protected]
Boycott:
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Stop Publisher Kill Switch in Games Practice:
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Banner credits: BYTEAlliance
We worked the last months on a new completely ad-free database for European products, brands, services and companies. A few days ago we released the site. The website focuses on usability with a simple search form and a clear structure. After the technical development we are now in the process of filling the database with content.
If you have any feedback, we would appreciate it. If you like it and want to share it, we appreciate that too. :)
Thanks in advance!
It would be great if search engines had some EU specific support features like:
Locale filter for EU. Currently I can choose a country, or no filter (global). If I want to know for instance whether a product is available in the EU I have to cycle through countries one by one or then add "europe" to the search query. The latter rarely helps since I'm searching in English and the results only come from Brexitannia or the USA. I can also search using different languages but that has its obvious limitations which brings me to ->
An option which automatically translates your search query to different languages and looks for websites in the EU area that match. I want to hear peoples experiences with European products and where to buy them - these are rarely in English and need to be more accessible to everyone despite what language they speak.
I'll add a small rant on what I hate about buying European.
We don't have any shared place to compare products. Everyone is focused on their own country and their own language.
There's probably great companies all across Europe with similar products but no way to compare them.
I know there are organisations like ICRT who promote product testing but they rely on country specific publications to do the reviews / publish the results. These publications in turn have a strong focus on what's available in the top 3 stores in a specific country with no regards to the fact that you can practically order anything from the internet. Further more their methodologies are often lacking.
Meanwhile USA has youtube.
To end on a positive note, what we're doing here might end up solving this problem as well.
Looks nice, but you should've registered a .eu domain for that page IMO
wasn't available - as you can imagine that would have been the first choice and we went for "catchy" name instead of something random but .eu
we went for “catchy” name instead of something random but .eu
Ok!
All good related EU domains got squatted by scalpers
Being able to search by country of origin and product reach would be great.
Thanks for the feedback! We want to add that once we add online shops. Currently we list services and manufacturers but not online shops that are simply online shops (and not manufacturers as well). We want to do this separately to make it more user-friendly and not overload a single section. In the online shop section, we would like to give users the option to select the online shops that deliver to their country.
What's the advantage of using your site over https://www.buy-european-made.eu/?
This! Didn’t know about either but seems like this one has a wider collection, while I found your website easier to navigate (since it’s a catalog).
Just found out there is also https://european-alternatives.eu/
Any chance you guys can join efforts?
That is a commercial project. Ours is ad-free. So I guess that is not an option.
Oh, you’re free to use whatever resource you like. If you want my biased opinion: the difference is like night and day. I find it slower and less structured, so I definitely prefer our approach. But I’m sure some people might prefer the other one - it just depends on what you’re looking for. I also read that they use(d) Google Analytics which is weird to me. But I mean we use .net and not .eu (as catchy .eu domain names were already registered) - so I guess nobody's perfect.
Another difference: The website you mentioned can be discussed here. This is a one-way street as I learned as my post about our website on the related subreddit got deleted and another user's post about our website got deleted too.
The biggest issue we face right now is filling the database but people are already submitting lots of suggestions using the form on the website which helps a lot :)
Yeah, using Google analytics is definitely weird.
Some suggestions:
Maybe also a new section for electronics? Like laptops (Tuxedo for example) and phones (HMD, Fairphone, Gigaset, Shiftphone)
Great additions, thank you! I'm very grateful for people helping to fill the database by submitting suggestions either here or through the "Submit suggestion" form on the website.
Let's forget not to buy Canadian products
Royal Enfield was originally a UK company but was sold off and is now an Indian company: https://www.udayavani.com/english-news/is-royal-enfield-an-indian-company
Thanks for the info - it's now removed!
Oh, that's blazing fast ⚡
🫡
Welcome to Lemmy, thank you for posting here!
Good initiative.
I gave here we go (navigation app) a try but I don't see how they earn money from this app which makes me wonder what they do with my location data and what not. I read their TOS but couldn't make much of it. I see something about location based ads but nowhere where I can buy an ad free version that does not track you.
I'm all for european alternatives but we should be wary we do not fall for the same shit as their US counterparts.
Canva (an Australian company) bought Serif not long ago, so Affinity Photo is technically Australian software now. Might want to update that list ^^
We are still evaluating how to assess that as the company Serif is still located in the UK AFAIK which means that they work under European legislation. If they should start to shift everything to Australia that would change but right now we check for the company address and not for the owners of that company - definitely up for discussion what's better.
I just think it's hard to address that as for example publicly traded companies are usually owned by several investors and might even be hold in majority by foreign investors - but the company itself has to follow regional laws which is what we focus on.
I don’t know if this has been suggested before but is there a way to categorise them? Something simple and easy to understand like gold, silver and bronze? Gold could be EU based companies that produce their products in the EU. Silver could be companies that are based in and produce their products in the wider European community (under European legislation). Bronze could be a company that fulfils one of those criteria like a European company who produces their products in China. Or even an American company who produces their products in Europe (it may mean profits going to America but it also means jobs in Europe and if there’s nothing but non-European competitors in a sector then surely this is better?)
Fantastic idea! Technically we could add this quickly. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure we will not be able to editorially work on that within the next couple of weeks where we focus on expanding the database itself but we should definitely consider this! Maybe we can get some people on board who help with the research for this.
That’s fair, thanks for expanding on the criteria! Serif is indeed still located in the UK, I had a look before commenting. The address of the company headquarters matters, for sure.
for example publicly traded companies are usually owned by several investors and might even be hold in majority by foreign investors - but the company itself has to follow regional laws which is what we focus on.
Absolutely. Ubisoft is a great example of that. Last time I checked, Tencent owns a bunch of shares there - not enough for a majority, yet it’s still a concern for the future.
The site is bookmarked and I’m looking forward to watching it develop!
Great idea but you're not going to make it if you don't accept submissions and have some sort of process to have them vetted by a community of helpers of some kind.
Also, I can't help but noticing:
buyeuropean@lemmy.ca to Buy European@feddit.uk
🙂
Just added the "Submit suggestion" feature. Thanks again for your feedback!
That is great feedback, thank you!
We definitely want to make it more interactive. First of all submitting suggestions. Then we might add ratings and comments.
To be honest, I am new to the whole Fediverse technology and am still trying to wrap my head around it - so I created two accounts which I guess I did not need. Never stop learning! 😅
You're doing great, thanks for joining us!
No I meant, it's amusing that Buy-European is a community on a UK instance and you - the OP - are on a Canadian one 🙂 But it's cool, no problem.
Oh! See, a lot to learn. I'm sure I will figure it out at some point. 🫠
No no you're fine. The instance really doesn't matter.