If you have ever wanted to produce your own-brand products, then private label products are the route to go down. With private label products, you will be outsourcing the production to a third-party manufacturing facility. They will produce the products to your specifications, and you brand them how you see fit. It is a great method for an established company to expand its product selection and an affordable method for new companies to stand out from the crowd.
On this page, we want to run you through the steps to build and promote your own private label products. This isn’t going to be a complete guide i.e. we aren’t going to go into huge amounts of detail on the steps to create a product and market it. However, we want to give you an overview of the process so you know the amount of work that you will have to be putting in.
What is Private Label?
Private label products are when a retailer outsources the production of their own-brand products to a third-party manufacturer. The products will be produced to the specifications of the retailer, and the product packaging will feature the retailer’s own brand.
According to SageMailer, white label products are also a type of private label product. However, with white label products, the retailer doesn’t have much control over the manufacturing of their product. Instead, they just add their own brand to an already manufactured product.
Choosing the Manufacturer
There are a lot of private label manufacturers out there. Your job is to track down the one that is right for your business. We suggest that you start with platforms like Alibaba.com, although there are a few other locations out there too.
When selecting your manufacturer, you want to know that they are capable of producing the product that you want. For example, you probably wouldn’t choose a manufacturer for private label headphones if they only have experience in producing private label cosmetics, would you? They wouldn’t have the facilities that are required for headphone production.
As you do your research, you will want to look for manufacturers that have decent reviews. This is why you should be using sites like Alibaba.com. It is easy to work out which companies are good and which ones should be avoided.
Don’t commit yourself to a company before you have spoken to them at length, though. Any manufacturer worth their salt will be able to listen to your requirements for your products. They will be able to tell you whether they can help you out, and they will also be able to give you pricing information and minimum order quantities. If a manufacturer doesn’t seem that keen on talking to you, then they need to be avoided. It will only result in problems later on.
Choosing a manufacturer is likely going to be the lengthiest part of the process because it is so important. If you choose the wrong manufacturer, then your private label product plans will be dead in the water.
Designing Your Product
We are going to assume that you have already carried out your market research by this point. This means that you will already have a rough idea about the type of product that you wish to create and who it will be aimed at. If you have yet to do your market research, then do that before you commit to designing a product.
If you are selling white label products i.e. pre-designed products that just need your branding added to them, then you will be able to skip this step. If you want a bit more control over your private label product, however, you are going to need to work closely with the manufacturer.
Any good manufacturer will work with you on the design for your private label products. This means that they will listen to the budget that you have in mind. They will also consider the type of product that you want to create. This may be something as simple as changing up the color of the product, or it may mean changing up the manufacturing materials or ingredients used in the creation of the product.
It is important that you lean on the expertise of the manufacturer here. They will be able to tell you whether something can or can’t be accomplished. A manufacturer that agrees to every one of your requests probably won’t be a very good manufacturer to work with. After all, you need them to be able to tell you whether a product design is going to work or not.
Don’t forget to order samples of your designed product. You don’t want to commit to a huge manufacturing run unless you are happy with the product, do you?
Branding Your Product
The whole reason why businesses have private label or white label products manufactured is so that they can add their own branding to the product packaging or Amazon’s Frustration-Free Packaging.
The manufacturer for the product should be able to give you a rough idea of what the product packaging will look like. You can then take this design to a professional designer and ask them to create a design for you. It is important that you work with a designer that has experience with product packaging. This is because it is very hard to get the packaging design ‘right’.
Again, your market research is going to be playing a role in the branding of your product. You will want to emphasize product features that will appeal to your target market, for instance. You may also want to use specific designs that appeal to the target market too. For example; if you are launching a product for children, then the color scheme may be bright and ‘fun’, whereas a product designed for the professional market will have more muted sophisticated tones.
Selling Your Product
Your next step is to work out where you are selling the product and for how much.
Most people will sell their private label products on:
- Their own website
- Amazon
- eBay
Obviously, the more locations you sell the product, the more potential buyers will see it. However, it also requires a lot more effort to promote your product. So, at the start, we suggest that you stick to these three places and ‘expand’ from there.
The pricing of the products will be up to you. You will need to factor in the expenses of selling the product (manufacturing cost, labor, marketing, etc.) and work out how much profit you want to make on each sale. You will likely need to compare your product to similar products on the market to give you a rough price that you should be aiming for.
Promoting Your Product
Once you have your sales channels set up, it is time to start promoting your product.
You will need to spend a lot of time on your product description here. After all, it is the product description that will help strengthen your brand. It will tell people why they should be buying your product over the countless similar products on the market. It is recommended that you hire an experienced copywriter here. They will be able to produce a description that really ‘sells’ your product.
How you promote your product will be dependent on who your target market is, but it will likely involve the following:
- Social media promotion
- Search engine optimization
- Paid advertising
Remember, promotion is something that will never end. As long as you are continuing to sell a product, you should always be looking for ways to promote it. Thankfully, as the sales start to roll in, promotion gets easier. This is because you will start to benefit from all of that word-of-mouth advertising.
Conclusion
As you can see, designing and releasing your own private label products is a long and cumbersome process. It may take months and months to bring a single product to market. However, once the sales start to flow in, you will realize that all of that work is worth it.
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