[replicatorblog]

That is largely not the case. I spent ten years making private label medical devices for CVS, Kroger, Target, and dozens of other stores.

There tend to be specialist manufacturers who fill the store brand niches. E.g. in pharma, close to 90% of the pills, tabs, and liquids sold in front of the pharmacy counter are made by one company, Perrigo, whose entire model is predicated on being a store brand supplier.

I don't think Kimberly Clark makes the store brand paper products, nor does P&G make the store brand beauty/cleaning supplies.

[joezydeco]

And I can give an opposite case. I used to work for a large 1st-tier manufacturer of consumer batteries (hearing aid, AA, 9V, etc etc).

We were constantly competing with the other manufacturers for the Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS, etc white label brands. It was increased volume for our plants and they would usually suck up surplus supply.

The catch was that your contract was continually up for renewal and you had to beat the others on price and other criteria. After all, nobody else would know that the rack at Wag's was half-bunny and half-coppertop, right?

It was also a headache because defective parts and customer complaints counted against you hard. We actually tested our white label products more than the name brand SKUs.

[shadowwolf007]

I work in this industry as well. That said - private label is a small (but growing) area in the US markets, so it's hard to make a generalized statement of how much someone does or does not participate.

Many retailers are beginning tie production of private labeled products in with being the captain of a category - which begins to create incentive for companies to start to pursue these private label opportunities.

K-C and P&G are two examples of companies who largely resist the private label trends in the US - you could counter with ConAgra and Treehouse.

A lot of that has to do with the product and what-not, of course.

[ed: fixed a misspeak]