PRIVATE LABELS AS BAER DESIGN GROUP SEES IT

The trend:
While Europe has long led the private-label brands, America is catching up fast. According to ACNielsen’s 2005 Consumer and Market Trends Report, private- label sales in the U.S. have “outstripped branded sales two-to-one over the past seven years.”

Shoppers no longer associate low-quality and unaccountable anonymity with “the generic brand.” Over 20 private label categories currently populate the average American household. As Brand Marketing Magazine reported as far back as August 2000, “Private-label goods are now, virtually across the board, the most robust profit-generating stock keeping units in their stores.”

A “private label” is a line of products owned by the distributor or retailer, instead of the producer. This practice of cutting out the middleman has proven so profitable that some retailers are now storing the shop exclusively with their own label.

Design is king:
What turned the ugly duckling of product world into the coolest chick on the block? In one word: branding, the designer jeans of marketing. Think back to the generics of yesteryear. There they sat, in their white label with

black, block letters starkly announcing the contents: Peas. Flour. Powdered Milk. Their singular selling point was that they were cheap. The tacit deal this struck with the shopper was that for a lower price, they would get the most basic no-frills version - a knock-off - of the brand name good. Having forever stuck out like William Hung at a Paris Hilton party, the generic product now carries all kinds of cachet thanks to a smart design makeover.

Consider the branding that health- and environment- conscious stores such as Whole Foods predicated their identity on and how naturally that extended to their in-house products.  Whether that’s your bag or not, the process contains the same basic caveats and requirements for anyone considering a private-label program.

The ABCs of how
to start:
Start by choosing a few core products that will allow ease of entry for your new brand, and develop an identity flexible enough to expand to other items. The crucial part here is design. Do not hesitate to allot a considerable amount of front-end time to create a uniform application that will work across the board. While brand-recognition is the goal, you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner with a near-sighted style that might not be

appropriate for future categories. Frank Mayes, the principal of Mayes Consulting, which specializes in private labels, comments that: “Design can make or break a marketing program.”

While a couple different strategies exist – such as mimicking the national brands to blend into the category - a higher approach is to develop a distinctive style. It’s much smarter to sidestep competition with nationally established brands in favor of presenting yourself as a unique offering from the store. Remember that there is already an implicit relation of trust between the consumer and the store since they’ve already made the choice to shop there. Done right, this kind of synergy between the retailer and its products catalyzes the principle of one-hand-washing-
the-other into infinite boomerang.