The Big, Secretive Business Of Amazon’s 100+ Private-Label Brands

I tried selling items on Amazon. For most things, it's a race to the bottom price-wise. When you finally get an item that sells well, Amazon comes in and sells the item themselves. Their economies of scale allow them to price everyone else out, and if that still doesn't shut you down, they simply force your item onto page two where no one looks. The house ALWAYS wins.

As a 40 year old, I remember most store brands being the worst of the worst as as a kid. They seem to have upped their game over the last 30+ years. Now it’s often not even a compromise to go with the store brand.

it's scary how amazon used retailers to build their brand and now is slowly trying to out-compete them on their own businesses..

Private labeling is an enormous part of the manufacturing of literally everything. It’s been around forever and will never go away.

"design patent" is the most important piece of information from this entire video. It had a lot of great info, but that's the take away message so they don't screw you over too.

It’s a simple formula. Since Amazon owns the marketplace, they see everything. They know exactly what products will do well. Since the research and development costs have already been paid for by the other sellers, Amazon just needs to make a copycat product, sell it for less and choke out the competition. Amazon can even sell at a significant loss and win in the end. I remember reading how they did this with a diaper company.

Amazon also manipulates the search results. If you sort by lowest price first you lose half the results and usually get products that aren't the same as what you searched for.

The last comment on the video was gold: Peak pays for design patents on everything to protect themselves from Amazon knockoffs. (Expensive option the first time, but gives the best protection, and gets progressively easier as you do more of them.)

Issue is how Amazon uses sellers data to compete. This illustrates the value and power of your company's data. The world wants a cheaper brand as it serves a need or provides a solution. Different income groups have limited money. Also a product may be built to a higher standard then the consumers requirement. This was a great, informative video by CNBC, Thank You.

I'm Italian but I live in Greece and despite the great recovery of the Country (almost going default just few years ago), it looks like Greeks have learned how to save money at the grocery shop. There's a big chain here that offers two store brands' products: the "premium" one (which is about 25-30% cheaper than the brand name) and the "basic" one, which can often be 40-50% off the brand name. Here in Europe the companies are obliged to show in the package the factory where the specific product has been manufactured and you can actually understand which brand made it. You can't imagine how many great products are hidden within the store brands!

A weak dollar can signal an economic downturn, making me to ponder on what are the best possible ways to hedge against inflation, and I've overheard people say inflation is a money-eater thus worried about my savings around $200k

When I worked for Krogers, they told us in training that Krogers' canned vegetables are canned at the same factory as Libby's canned products. All they do is just change the label.

I'll buy what's cheap and works. I haven't had issues with Amazon basic items

It's all about that "data" baby... Data is key. These big companies have So much power...

What's interesting is that when a Chinese company does "private label" it's called a "knock off" but when American companies do it it's called "private label".

Society teaches me that if it's not my problem, I can ignore it.

From a consumer standpoint, private label isn’t the biggest threat, it’s the rampant counterfeiting on Amazon. At least private label someone KNOWS they are getting a knockoff or generic product. But Amazon has virtually zero track record cracking down on counterfeit products. Many reviews alone would sound the alarm, and if Amazon cared, they could do something (like they aren’t monitoring that data) but in many cases it’s blatantly obvious a product is counterfeit while being sold as genuine simply from the abnormally low price.

I am in the transportation business, you would not believe the amount of name brand manufacturers also make the same generic items. The way I shop has drastically changed over the years.

I am also a victim of this I had to give up all information to be able to sell products on Amazon THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SELLER PROTECTION.

Amazon requires sellers to provide information such as providers invoices with the claim that they want to make sure the merchandise is not fake. This is how they get access to a seller's supplier and knows the cost the seller has negotiated with the supplier.