What is Private Label Selling?
Selling products on Amazon by creating your own private labeling is a great way to establish a brand. Private labels are also called phantom brands because they are manufactured by one company yet offered by another and are available in a wide range of industries that are usually positioned as lower-cost alternatives to brand-name products.
Examples of Private Labels
Private labels are common in grocery stores. Richelieu Foods is an example of one provider that markets frozen pizza and condiments for groceries under the name Culinary Circle and Earth’s Pride. Amazon itself has dozens of its own private labels, selling everything from clothes to food and supplements and even electronics under names like Happy Baby, Mama Bear, Ella Moon, and Pinzon. Even Amazon Echo is a private label brand!
The Advantage of Selling Via Private Label
Establishing a private label allows you to protect your business and establish brand identity. Without establishing a private label, you’ll compete with other Amazon sellers to get the coveted spot in the Buy Box, which is generally based on the best price for a specific product. Other sellers can keep lowering their price to remain in that top spot. In other words, you expose yourself to price wars.
Become the Only Seller
Private labels allow you to become the only seller of a particular product or line of products. As the sole provider, you are free to set your own prices and write enhanced content pages with multiple photos that Amazon provides when you apply for the Amazon Brand Registry. Establishing a private label allows you to better tell the stories behind your product and your brand, which in turn, results in more sales. In this manner, you can differentiate yourself from the competition and build a sustainable business.
Private Labeling is Not Enough
Customers buy from a label because the product works for them. Products generate emotional responses and online thieves know this. Even with a private label, an online thief can easily harm your business on Amazon through a variety of tactics and steal your sales. Such schemes can include:
- Traffic diversion. This is where your private label is used as a keyword, sometimes misspelled, to drive traffic to a bogus website. Customers often don’t notice misspellings and fall for the tactic.
- Cybersquatting and typo squatting is similar to diversion where your name or slogan is used, albeit with misspellings, to avoid trademark issues.
- Counterfeiting and grey marketing. This is where thieves sell inferior copies of your goods, often refurbished or remodeled.
- SEO manipulation, where your name, logo, or slogan is used on another website as part of a header, meta tag, or with coding that can result in the thieves’ site ranking higher than yours.
Protect Your Private Label With Brandlox
Establishing your private label is a lot of work. Although Amazon has some protections in place with its Brand Registry, you often need to prove that a fraudulent seller has piggybacked on your listings or has stolen information from your ASINs. Brandlox constant monitoring to catch counterfeiters, unauthorized resellers and trademark infringement activity frees you up to grow your business.
Affordable Rates
You can’t afford not to protect your private label with Brandlox software. Monthly fees are less than the damage that thieves can do to your business. Contact us to learn more.
