White Labelling — The Dollar Dictionary

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Business

White Labelling

Selling products or services made by another company under your own brand — you handle the marketing and customer relationships while the manufacturer handles production.

White labelling works well in industries where: the product is relatively commoditised (the formula or specification is standardised), branding and distribution are the real value-adds, and customers are brand-loyal rather than manufacturer-loyal. Common white label sectors: supplements and health products, cosmetics and skincare, software and SaaS (agencies resell white-labelled marketing or analytics tools under their own brand), financial products (broker platforms, payment processing), and food and beverage.

The economics: you pay the manufacturer a wholesale price (typically 20-40% of the retail price for physical goods), add your branding and packaging costs, then sell at full retail. Margins of 50-70% are achievable in categories like supplements. The main risks: if the manufacturer has quality control problems, your brand takes the hit. If they raise prices or discontinue the product, your business is affected with little warning. And if the white label becomes well-known as a category (as Amazon Basics has), consumers may start searching for the cheapest white label option rather than being loyal to any specific brand.

White labelling is buying someone else's recipe and selling it under your own restaurant name. The kitchen (manufacturer) makes the food. You put your logo on the packaging, set the price, handle the customer experience, and keep the margin between what you pay the manufacturer and what customers pay you. The customer thinks it's your product — and in terms of the brand experience, it is. The manufacturing is just outsourced.

Real world: Most supermarket own-brand products are white label — the same factory that makes a branded cereal often runs an extra production shift making the identical cereal for Tesco's or Aldi's own label at lower cost. In the supplements industry, thousands of brands sell protein powder, vitamins, and pre-workout mixes manufactured by a handful of large contract manufacturers — same formulas, different labels, vastly different prices. Amazon Basics is one of the most aggressive white label strategies in history — Amazon identifies the best-selling products on its own platform, manufacturers a version, and sells it at a lower price using its distribution advantage.

💡 White labelling lets you build a brand without building a factory — the margin lives in marketing, positioning, and customer relationships, not in manufacturing expertise.

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