Diversification is not the same as duplication
Many organisations responded to 2026's tariff instability by adding a second supplier per category, without checking whether that supplier was genuinely exposed to different risk. Two suppliers in the same tariff jurisdiction offer little real protection.
What good diversification looks like
Effective diversification spreads exposure across genuinely different regulatory and geographic risk profiles, not just different company names. It also requires pre-qualification work done before disruption hits, so an alternative supplier can be activated in days, not months.
Testing your current supplier base
Map each critical category against its suppliers' actual country of origin and tariff exposure, not just their invoicing address. Where two "different" suppliers share the same underlying exposure, that is a resilience gap worth closing before the next shock, not after it.
Back to Insights