Awhite-label product is aproduct or service produced by one company (theproducer) that other companies (themarketers)rebrand to make it appear as if they had made it.[1][2]The name derives from the image of a white label on thepackaging that can be filled in with the marketer'strade dress. White-label products are sold by retailers with their own trademark but the products themselves are manufactured by athird party.[3]
White label production is often used formass-produced generic products including electronics,[4] consumer products and software packages[5] such as DVD players, televisions, and web applications. Some companies maintain a sub-brand for their goods. For example, in theUnited Kingdom, the same model of DVD player may be sold byDixons as aSaisho and byCurrys as aMatsui, which are brands exclusively used by those companies.[6]
Some websites use white labels to enable a successful brand to offer a service without having to invest in creating the technology and infrastructure itself. Many IT and modern marketing companies outsource or use white-label companies and services to provide specialist services without having to invest in developing their own product.
Most supermarketstore brand products are provided by companies that sell to multiple supermarkets, changing only the labels. In addition, some manufacturers create low-costgeneric brand labels with only the name of the product ("Beer", "Cola", etc.).Richelieu Foods, for example, is aprivate label food manufacturing company producing frozen pizza, salad dressing, sauces, marinades, condiments, and deli salads for other companies, includingHy-Vee,Aldi,Save A Lot,Sam's Club,[7]Hannaford,[8]BJ's Wholesale Club (Earth's Pride brand), andShaw's Supermarkets (Culinary Circle brand).[8] Amazon offers consumer goods produced by third parties but sold under theAmazon Basics brand.[9]
Business-to-Business (B2B) marketplaces offer Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) andOriginal Design Manufacturers (ODMs) that make products sold under the buyer's brand, which is what white-label production entails. In this case, the brand owner uses its own distribution network andmarketing skills to sell the product.[10] Chinese marketplaces like Alibaba.com and Made-in-China enable buyers to create specialized products that can be labelled bysmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thegarment industry is an example where customization and equipment sharing support the OEM/ODM requirements of buyers.[11]
Smallerbanks sometimes outsource theircredit card or check processing operations to larger banks, which issue and process the credit cards as white-label cards, typically for a fee, allowing the smaller bank to brand the cards as their own without having to invest in the necessary infrastructure. For example,Cuscal Limited provides white-label card and transactional products to credit unions in Australia;Simple issued bank accounts anddebit cards operated by The Bancorp Bank andBBVA Compass in the United States.[12]
In Southern California,City National Bank is the largest check processor in that half of the state, because in addition to checks issued by its own customers, CNB processed checks[when?] for the customers of more than 60 smaller Southern California banks.[citation needed]
Many software companies offer white-label software to agencies or other customers, including the possibility to resell the software under the customer's brand. This typically requires functionalities such as the adaptation of the software's visual appearance, multi-customer management and automatic billing to the end-customers based on usage parameters.[13]
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