Nearshoring has been a buzzword in the fashion industry for years, but it is reaching a tipping point amid mounting disruptions—including tariffs.
In a Capgemini survey conducted in January, 56 percent of U.S. and European executives across sectors said their companies invested in nearshoring or reshoring in the past year, up from 42 percent in 2024, and 35 percent plan to grow their investments in 2025. The report also projects that the practice of “friendshoring”—or setting up manufacturing in countries that are geopolitical and trade allies—will rise, with executives planning to allocate a greater share of production to these destinations in the next three years.
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The path for this nearshoring wave was paved by two manufacturing movements in recent decades, according to Tanya Menendez, co-founder and CEO of the newly launched B2B manufacturing marketplace Nearshore. Globalization saw the relocation of production overseas to save costs, and then the early aughts ushered in the “maker movement” with a focus on localized production. Responding to the latter trend, Menendez co-founded the platform Maker’s Row in the 2010s (which she has since exited) to help facilitate local-for-local production.
Nearshoring has been picking up steam since the pandemic, but last year Menendez saw it accelerate further, with developments including Mexico claiming the top spot among the United States’ trade partners and looming political tensions. This sparked the concept for Nearshore, a platform that connects buyers with a network of factories across the U.S., Latin America and Europe.
Following its pre-seed funding round that raised $1.6 million from Slauson & Co, SV Angel and angel investor Eliana Murillo, Nearshore was in stealth development for around nine months before making its public debut on April 7, which ended up being “serendipitous” timing, mere days after President Trump announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs. “It’s definitely putting business owners in a position where they will need to consider optionality as part of their plan and have a plan B and maybe a plan C for their production, and potentially even spreading their risk a bit more in different geographies, because we’re not sure what’s going to happen,” Menendez told Sourcing Journal. “And if you have all 100 percent of your production overseas, it’s very risky right now.”
She added, “I’m happy that we’ve been doing all of this work up until now, because now we have all of these resources to support business owners that are ready to begin sourcing nearshore.”
The benefits of producing closer to home extend beyond tariff preparedness to include shortened lead times and improved collaboration. Looking back on her personal experience producing and sourcing in New York when she was running her own brand a decade ago, Menendez said, “It’s nice to do business in a way that you can actually communicate and connect with and support each other.” She also noted, “When production is close by, innovation happens.”
The appetite for nearshoring is accelerating, but transitioning supply chains and locating new partners has traditionally been a challenge. “Most businesses would prefer to at least price check some of the local factories before going overseas,” she said. “But the problem is, it’s really hard to find all these factories and really hard to get in front of them.” For instance, one Colombian factory on the platform would have remained under the radar if it weren’t for a word-of-mouth introduction via one of Nearshore’s investors.
To navigate sourcing’s “insiders’ market,” Menendez brought on co-founder Liz Long, who has worked in manufacturing for two decades. “There’s incredible untapped potential across the Americas,” Long said. “I speak with factories in Latin America every day that have the technology and capacity to take on more orders—yet many U.S. buyers don’t know they exist.”
Nearshore has a research team that does factory outreach, contacting and sometimes visiting factories in person to verify and onboard them. Part of the vetting process is ensuring that the contacts own the factory, weeding out brokers or middlemen. By launch, Nearshore had amassed a network of over 2,200 factories across 25 countries, with 50 categories represented including apparel and footwear. This database is searchable using filters including product category, capacity and certifications. Helping the factories present and market themselves while adding a human touch, Nearshore encourages manufacturers to include photos from their facilities in their listings, and the startup has also filmed interviews with factory leaders to put a face to the companies.
Rounding out the co-founder trio is Cliff Hazelton, who is also chief technology officer of Nearshore and was formerly the chief technology officer at finance app Stash. When building out the platform, one focus was making sourcing more personal. “The supply chains of the future will be built on relationships—not just transactions,” he said. “We’re creating a system where businesses and factories grow together.”
Pre-launch, Nearshore was open to some buyers on an invite-only basis, with a focus on brand customers that are scaling, and the platform has already facilitated projects across categories including apparel, home goods and packaging. “We were able to get so much traction with factories, because we had legitimate sales leads for them,” said Menendez.
Helping to spark these partnerships, Nearshore enables buyers to enter a request for quote (RFQ) and be introduced to factories that could be a fit for their needs. Inspired by dating apps like Hinge, where the focus is on building a relationship, the platform is beta testing an artificial intelligence-powered matchmaking tool. Along with helping suppliers and buyers meet, Nearshore is introducing AI translation capabilities to ease communication across countries and continents, breaking down possible language barriers. Nearshore is also testing AI solutions that can help buyers flesh out their RFQs. “We’re continuing to innovate and add more and more support for both sides to help both sides get to the right place and the right match,” said Menendez.
Nearshore aims to bring people back to the forefront of fashion sourcing. As apparel production moved out of the U.S., “that shift from being one of the largest producers to one of the largest buyers of apparel also shifted our mindset of seeing clothing as disposable, seeing clothing as something that you buy, but you almost forget that…it’s not an automated thing that’s happened—people are cutting, people are sewing,” Menendez said. “What we’re looking to do with Nearshore is definitely humanize the collaboration experience.”
