Market Watch: Why More Distributors Are Quietly Moving Away From Single-Country Sourcing

For a long time, buying from one country looked like the sensible choice. One supplier to manage, one set of paperwork, fewer moving parts. Plenty of distributors still work that way, and for many of them it still makes sense. But the conversation around it has changed.

It shows up in the questions first

Price and lead time used to be the whole discussion. Now there's usually a follow-up right after: what happens to my order if your route gets disrupted? Nobody asks whether it could happen anymore. They assume it can, and they want to hear the plan. We hear this question far more often than we used to, especially when a framework contract is on the table.

Why now

There's no single trigger. It's several pressures stacking up at once.

• Resilience is creeping into procurement rules. EU law already requires it to be assessed in public tenders for clean-energy technology, where heavy dependence on one non-EU country can count against a bidder. Furniture isn't covered by that rule. But procurement teams watch where the rules are heading, and some distributors are preparing for the question before a tender committee asks it.
• Freight across Europe has become harder to predict. Border queues, strikes, blockades, sudden paperwork changes. A distributor who got caught out once, even with a completely different product, tends to become more careful with everything they buy.
• Penalty clauses have more teeth. When a distributor's own client fines them for every day of delay, that risk doesn't stay with the distributor. It moves upstream, straight into how they choose suppliers.
• Fixed prices on long contracts. A distributor quoting one price for three years needs a supply chain that can take a hit without the whole deal being renegotiated.

What diversification looks like in real life

Almost nobody splits one order between two countries. That usually creates more problems than it solves. What distributors do instead is keep a second qualified supplier in reserve. Sometimes it gets an order now and then, sometimes never. It exists so there's somewhere to go if the main route fails. Same logic as safety stock: you pay a little to keep it, and you're glad it's there when you need it.

Where this leaves us

Let's start with the obvious. Our furniture is made in Ukraine, and for many buyers "Ukraine" and "supply risk" sit close together. We understand why. We don't think the answer is to avoid the topic, or to claim that one well-run route always beats a diversified one. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

What we can do is be precise. Production runs in Ukraine, goods travel by road into the EU, and GEROM in Poland handles invoicing and customs. Deliveries go on trucks we work with directly and with external carriers we monitor at every stage. That's a very different risk profile from an ocean shipment passing through several hands, where no single party sees the whole journey.

It isn't risk-free. No route is. The difference is visibility. When something slows down on the way, we know where the truck is, who is responsible for that leg, and what the options are. A distributor dealing with us gets that information directly, not a tracking number and a promise.

The question worth asking any supplier

If resilience is becoming something you have to answer for, to your clients or to a tender committee, "are you reliable?" won't get you far. Every supplier says yes. Try this instead: if your main route were blocked for two weeks, what would happen to my order? Has that ever happened, and how did you handle it?

Listen for dates, places and what was done. If all you hear is reassurance, that tells you something too.

We'd rather answer that question in a conversation than in a newsletter, because the honest answer depends on your order, your destination and your timeline. Ask us, and we'll walk you through our route leg by leg.