In this solo presentation, Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, examines whether rebranding and white‑labeling products remain a viable strategy for brands. He begins by describing common perceptions—some view white‑label products as cheap or low‑quality, while others successfully use them to expand their line. Peterman defines rebranding (adding a brand’s logo and packaging to an existing product) and white‑labeling (a deeper customization where a manufacturer produces a product with a blank label for the brand to brand). He outlines the primary benefits: rapid time‑to‑market, cost savings from manufacturers’ existing tooling and economies of scale, and the ability to offer accessories without full development. He then discusses drawbacks, chiefly limited differentiation and the unsuitability of white‑labeling for a brand’s hero product. Peterman advises how to implement the approach correctly: limit white‑labeling to non‑core accessories, ensure the partner’s quality matches the brand’s standards, and avoid using it for flagship items. Finally, he explores ways to add genuine value beyond simple branding—enhanced materials, superior packaging, thoughtful product pairings, custom questionnaires, and guided purchasing experiences—to differentiate the offering and improve the customer experience. He concludes that, when used strategically, rebranding and white‑labeling can still be a good idea for expanding a product line.
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Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and on today's episode about launching a product, I want to address the question of whether rebranding and white labeling products is still a good idea. This is something that's come up. Before, people have different feelings about it. Some people think that it's really cheap or just kind of a way to quickly launch a product, but usually a cheap product. So there is a perception that white-labeled products aren't as good quality or shouldn't be done by brands that are bigger or brands that have a little bit more that they want to offer, more high-end brands, something to avoid. And while there's those people, there's also a lot of people that have really great white-labeled products and are able to do it in a way that makes a lot of sense for their brand. And I just want to talk a little bit about that and cover, cover a few things. I want to talk about what it is, what rebranding and white labeling a product is, benefits and drawbacks of doing it, How to do it right, and how to value add, making sure that you're actually adding value and not just being a reseller with no value add. First, what is rebranding and white labeling? So rebranding and white labeling in the product world is where a company makes a product. They make a mug. They make. Anything else that you can possibly imagine, and you simply rebrand it. You put your branding on it, your labeling on it, your logos, all that stuff gets put on it, and you then sell it as your own product. Same thing with white labeling. White labeling can be a little bit different where it can be a lot more custom. So it's where Somebody may totally customize a product. You know, it's not just changing a logo or, you know, putting a different graphic or decal on it, but it's actually customizing it to a larger degree. And then you— of course, they customize it with your logo, your information, and then they produce it for you, white labeling. So they produce it with basically a blank label and you put your name on it and then it goes out. Depending on how the relationship is set up, you can have the person that's doing the actual manufacturing, they may provide the actual technical support or take care of replacements, repairs, things like that, just depending on what level of products you're working with. But basically, it's just taking an existing product, manufacturer that this is what they do, their entire manufacture is that all they do is white labeling. They have a set of products that they offer and they customize it for each customer, and they're totally fine. They sit in the background and they basically wholesale their products only. Now, benefits and drawbacks of this are that you can easily launch a product, you can quickly get a product to market, you can take advantage of, hey, these This group of people, they've been making the product for ideally a while, so they've worked out the kinks. They have all the tooling set up. They can just kind of spool up their machines. They're set up to do this, so customizing things is pretty easy. They laser engrave a different logo on it, or they change out a material for you, and they just kind of are able to easily swap things around so that it's your product, it matches your brand, it matches your aesthetic, it matches what you're looking for, and they have all the expertise. You don't have to worry about all the different manufacturers required. They can assemble it. Oftentimes they can do the custom packaging and things like that for you. And so it gives you this really nice package to be able to go, I want a product like this, and these guys make it, and they'll— they're willing to white label it and brand it for us. And That benefit is it, you know, it's faster, it's cheaper on the setup. They do, you know, if you were to manufacture it yourself, you could of course manufacture it for less. They have to make a profit somewhere, and it's somewhat custom, so it won't be the cheapest wholesale. But at the same time, they may be producing enough, so they may produce a million units of a product, say, and you only order 5,000, but there's 500 other people that are all buying thousands of products a year that are slight variations, meaning that this company is able to have pricing that some— sometimes a white labeling company can actually give you a better per-part price than if you were to go make the product yourself because they're making so many and, and minor changes in material or some aesthetic components may not actually change the price enough for it to be more expensive. So you can actually end up saving money as well as time when doing this. Now, as a drawback, of course, if there's 500 other companies selling a product that is pretty similar to what you have, then you're not gonna have, there's very little differentiation between Let's say, let's say you're doing this with a hairbrush. Your hairbrush, their hairbrush, same, 2 different woods, maybe the handle is slightly different and different logo is engraved on it. You're not going to be able to sit there and say, well, ours is better because of all of these reasons that we've designed into the product, and this is why it's better. They're the same product, minor changes. It's not really a sell at that point to say Oh, why is our product so much better? Because it's basically the same. So that's the drawback, is that it's, it's going to limit you really to products that aren't your main. So I've talked about this before, your hero product ideally is not a white-labeled product because it means that somebody else is also making a similar product. However, the benefit of doing white labeling is that you can launch accessories, you can launch additional, you know, small products to help fill out your e-commerce and be able to offer more products that you know your customers want and will use without having to fully develop from scratch every single little product that goes with it. So how to do this right? I talked a little bit about this, but really the way that you, you optimize and take advantage of rebranding or white labeling a product is that you Limit it to your products that are not your primary. They're not ideally not going to be your most expensive or your hero products. It's not going to be the product that you put a giant picture on your home page for. It's not going to be something that's probably customized to your customers. So if your products are customized to your customers, then this kind of gets into a loop that can be quite exhausting in trying to white label from somebody else and then white label again for someone else. So there's benefits to that, but there's also extra layers to making that successful. Um, so you want to really just think about what products are core, what are the ones that you want your brand known for, and then take all the other products, all the accessories, all the small products Any side products that would work really well, they're complementary products, those are ones you should look at. Well, is there somebody that makes a product that fits this? Do they do white labeling? Is it the quality? You know, so making sure that the quality and the workmanship and things like that of the product that you're getting, they need to match your main brand. So that's one of the things to be, be careful of and make sure you're doing correctly is when you are white labeling, make sure that they can produce products at the same quality, because there's nothing worse than getting an amazing product with the worst accessories possible that break constantly. And you kind of start— it starts to make people wonder whether the main product is going to actually last or not. And so doing it right means making sure that everything's going to line up and your customer is going to have an experience that is the same across the board. Whether it's a white-labeled product that you're selling them along with your product or your main hero product. Now, value-add. So the 4th thing that I wanna talk about is how do you add value? Obviously, new branding, new logo isn't gonna be a value-add. So where I have found the best way to produce a value-add for that product is in getting some additional customization. So whether it's pairing it with a product, actually customizing the product a little bit, making them— improving the material quality, or in some way elevating the user experience, better packaging, things like that, to where it's going to be a better experience for for the customer and making sure that when you're adding product, if you say add 20 of these products, making sure that you're adding value, you can add value in the customer service, in how you guide people to purchasing a product. So if you're working in, we used the hairbrush example before, but if you're working with a whole bunch of beauty products, for example, that are white-labeled, Then instead of just putting them all up on your website, maybe your value add is that you have a special questionnaire that you built that guides people to the right product, and that you pair products together that you know people will use, especially if it's something that people don't necessarily think about. But if you've put all that thought into saying, okay, well, these products pair well together, this is, you know, I got all these white label products because they really support my main product. Here's how they go together. And giving all that information will allow you to add value to an otherwise very similar product somebody else is selling, you know, all over the place. You maybe have 500 people selling the same exact product, but you're presenting it in a way where you've done research, you're giving it more information, you're giving the customer the ability to have a better experience and pick the right products for them. So I hope this gives you some ideas on white labeling and rebranding products, why it's still a good idea, and how to do it right so that you end up with a good customer experience and it really improves your, your product line and what you're able to offer your customers. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed. And like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information and The description. And of course, we're on all social media as well, so check us out there. All right, thank you. Thank you.
