What is a Private Label?
A private label is a logo or pattern on a product made by a manufacturer and sold under the retailer’s brand name. It represents retailers and helps build brand loyalty.
When you put your private label and brand on a generic product, it is very helpful for consumers to distinguish your product from other products. If your products have good design and quality, consumers are always willing to pay a higher price and remain loyal to your brand, which differentiates your products from similar competitors and retailers.
How to Private Label Your Product and Packaging?
Understand the costs of private labeling
It’s important to understand your initial startup costs before delving into a private label. Private labeling is more expensive than reselling or drop-shipping. However, this input of capital generally results in a higher return on your investment in the long run.
• Manufacturing
You’ll have to pay for typical production costs like materials, manufacturing, labor, and shipping. You’ll also need to take into account the customization fee. Most factories will charge a fee to customize a product with your logo, packaging, or specifications.
• Brand
You’ll also need capital to design your brand itself. You’ll likely want to hire a graphic designer to build your logo and package design. You may also want to build a content strategy to emphasize your brand’s voice.
• Marketing
A major aspect of private labeling is marketing. Customers don’t know about your brand, so you need to spread awareness to become more visible. Marketing like sponsored and boosted posts can create a significant expense. You will likely also need to pay for a website builder and domain name.
Choose the products you want to sell
• Classification and search
While sorting through all products, you’ll want to look for a product that has a ranking of less than 1,000 and has less than 1,000 reviews to ensure the market isn’t already saturated. Next, check out your competition. How many other people are selling this product? Ideally, your competition should have average or (better yet) below-average quality. If they have measly descriptions and only a few pictures that do a lackluster job of showing the product– that’s good news for you.
• Comparison and selection
You may have to compare what’s selling well on Amazon to some of the “hot” sellers on eBay to get the best picture of how a product is doing online. Mostly though, it involves doing a lot of research to find the right product that both speaks to you and your potential customers.
• Change and expansion
You can always switch products if the first product you sell doesn’t work out or you want to change directions. The goal is less to stick to one product but instead to use product research as a lens into your overall industry and niche. With this in mind, you should also think about a number of similar products that will also fit into your brand. For example, if you sell handbags, you can also sell purses. If you sell scarves and gloves, you can sell other accessories as well.
Define your target market
• Market Segmenting
After market segmentation, the sub-markets are more specific, which makes it easier to understand the needs of consumers. Enterprises can determine their service targets, namely the target market, according to their own business ideas, policies, production technology, and marketing strength. In the segmented market, information is easy to understand and feedback. Once the needs of consumers change, enterprises can quickly change their marketing strategies and formulate corresponding countermeasures to improve their adaptability and competitiveness.
• Market Targeting
Who is your ideal customer? Who is most likely to purchase your specific product?
This will help you determine the types of products you’ll sell and how you’ll market those products. The customer is the key to your market and your brand.
Why choose your target market? Because not all sub-markets are attractive to the enterprise, any enterprise does not have enough human resources and capital to meet the whole market or pursue excessively large goals. Only by exploiting its strengths and circumventing its weaknesses can it find the target market that gives play to its existing advantages.
• Market Positioning
Market positioning refers to the arrangement to make the product occupy a clear, special, and ideal position in the eyes of target consumers relative to competitive products. Therefore, the position designed by marketing personnel must make their products different from competitive brands and obtain the greatest strategic advantage in the target market. Private labeling your products is a great way to quickly gain market positioning.
Find a supplier
An important part of private labeling is working with a strong supplier. Your manufacturer should have experience with private labeling so they can help you turn a profit on your goods.
Many overseas factories will make a generic products for a number of clients and customize those products with private labeling packaging. For example, you work with a supplier who makes water bottles and T-shirts. They have 10 clients who sell water bottles, each with their own unique logo printed on the bottles. The factory will usually charge a customization and packaging fee.
Ideally, you should look for a manufacturer that does not sell directly to customers. Using ones that only sell through third-party vendors (like you) means the market is likely less saturated with those products.
Build the brand
You’ve positioned yourself, created a differentiator, and found a supplier. Now it’s time to start building your business. You need to:
Copyright name and logo
Set up website
Create a social media presence
Form an LLC
Try to keep the logo simple. Adding a bunch of colors and intricacies into the design will both cost you additional money for printing and likely not show up well when scaled to smaller sizes. There are several websites available where artists offer their services to design the logo for you.
After spending all this time creating your brand and product, you should consider spending a few minutes protecting it. Look into what it takes to copyright your name and logo. Creating an LLC (limited liability company) may save you some headaches down the road.
Conclusion
A private label is a great way to differentiate your product and brand from the millions of e-commerce competitors. With your brand, you can sell generic products while building a loyal and engaged customer base.
Look for a product with minimal competition, but is already selling well. Once you’ve researched the product, find a reliable and trustworthy manufacturer that offers OEM. Request an initial sample order from your manufacturer and negotiate the price and shipping. Create a brand, logo, and foundation that you can grow past your initial product and the umbrella of eBay and Amazon. Finally, create a killer listing that’ll introduce your baby to the world!
As you can see, creating your own private label is not a get-rich-quick scheme you can implement overnight and hope to become an instant success. Like most things worth doing, it takes time, planning, and sometimes a little luck. The most important thing to remember is to be patient, vigilant, and detail-oriented.
