Go European website (former Buy European Made) - what we achieve in 3 weeks!

The last weeks have been wild! Three weeks ago I started a simple recommendation website for European products and services. Today we're working on what feels like a million things with over 30 active volunteers. Thank you to everyone who has supported, feedbacked, used, or shared the project so far! We've truly felt how community is capable of amazing things and endless kindnesses (and some rude messages/emails but it's the internet after all;).

What we have achieved so far

  • 20000 daily website visits. That's like having the entire population of Monaco (minus the royal family) visiting the website daily
  • 1080 product recommendations by the community in the database (and over 1000 products in the queue, we're working on it!)
  • 21.513 upvotes across all listings
  • 2000+ downloads of the Go European browser extension (available for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Google Chrome)
  • Featured in **15 news articles (**that we know of)
  • 30+ active volunteers spending their free time to make this project a reality
  • And of course 166K+ people in the sub!
  • Almost 1000 euros in donations to support the project (a cost breakdown report coming soon)

What has changed

  • We changed the name of the project from Buy European Made to Go European (don't worry, the old URL automatically redirects to our web address)
  • Products now have their own pages with "you might also like" recommendations underneath. You can start by looking for an alternative to Nike, jump to Decathlon, and end up learning about the Price of Bath, a UK tennis ball factory!
  • Did you catch a mistake? You can report it via the report form.

What will be next

  • Our dev team is working on an incredible open-source V2 for the platform
  • We're making improvements on the UX of the temporary website for an improved user experience
  • K-Robin keeps churning out browser extension updates like there's no tomorrow
  • We're working on a wiki/roadmap to outline the structure and future of the project for added transparency

Buying European is (still) a process!
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We're currently using some US services where we had to choose between speed and using less mature European alternatives. Our priority was getting the project up and running as quickly as possible so people could benefit immediately. We're planning to migrate to European providers in the coming weeks once we have a stable foundation—balancing our mission with delivering a usable product efficiently. Thank you all so much for the input and support! If this process has taught me anything it is that we're capable of incredible things together.

Europe doesn't look the same to me as it did a month ago:)

Later edit: I am looking to set up an official NGO for the donations, I am still figuring out the application process. The website I used for donations is a trusted Polish site that verified my ID with the same video validation used for banks.