8 tips: Selling Your First Private Label

What is Private Label?

Private label is taking an everyday product, but making it unique to you and your brand. You are taking a general product and packaging it in your own way. You may want to start a private label clothing line or it could be something like your own dog food. Anything can be turned into a private label product. Selling your first private label product may be scary. Amazon is a big space, but using these eight tips it will help you get on the right track for making your product successful.

 

Research Products

The first part to being successful in selling your first product is picking out a product that people have a need for. You may have a specific love for something, which is important, but sometimes the niche may be small and it might not be a good product to start with for your first one. When researching you want to find a product that doesn’t have a lot of competition, but you also want to make sure there is a demand for the product. Finding the right balance between a need and demand can be challenging, but looking at sales ranks of similar products can give you a rough idea. You can also look up how much a specific term or product is searched for. Google AdWords keyword planner, jungle scout and merchant word are great options for this.

 

Cost

Once you have a product idea you got to find a way to produce it as cheaply as possible. This generally means buying it from a factory in China or overseas where production is cheaper. By keeping your cost down, you can maximize profit and keep your prices competitive. If the product you picked out cannot be produced at a competitive price for the current market, then you probably need to reconsider what private label you want to do for your first product. Once you have an established brand you can come back to it because at that time you could charge more for it based on your reputation. Buying through agents makes getting a product easier, but it can cost more. If you find a factory on your own, then you may be able to get cost down because you are not going through a middleman to get the product. Also, partnering with others who are buying the same product is a good way to keep the cost down because the orders are larger and it is more reliable especially if the person your partnering with has ordered before or has a robust private label supplier network.

Establish and Quality

For your first private label item you want to make it come off as quality. You want to describe it as best you possible can on the product page. The thing the person sees first is the product page so you want to make sure you list all the positive things about your product. You want to be honest, but at the same time talk it up as much as possible. Explain how it is different or better than the competition.  Here is a nice article about how to control your merchant reputation on Amazon. Your first product you really need to make stand out from the crowd and once your brand has built a reputation, you can expand to other areas. A good product description is key to having a successful first product. In addition, positive comments are super important. You want to make sure your customers leave reviews and that they are good.

Build a Brand

Even though it is your first private label product you want to build a brand with it so you can grow for the future. What I mean by build a brand is come up with a creative name that can go on all your different products. You can then create a logo hat can go on all the packing of your different products. You might want to do it yourself with Photoshop, but hiring someone on Fiver to do it for you for as little as $5 could be a lot more cost effective for your time. For example, Walmart’s private label or store brand is Great Value. When you see this in their store you know it is one of their products produced just for them to sell. Normally this product isn’t any different than the name brand beside it on the shelf except the packaging is cheaper looking. The quality of the product is still just as good. You want to do the same thing that the big box stores have done. Model your brand after theirs so you will stand out in the market once you become more established. You want to do this early though with your first product so you don’t have to change down the road.

Don’t Neglect Packaging

Tied into quality and standing out from the crowd is your packaging. Make it colorful and unique. Include all the key points on the package. Also, include your logo and brand. After the person sees your Amazon product page, they will see your packaging or photos of your product so you want it to stand out. Packaging is how you can make your product unique and get the message of your brand across. In addition, the photos must be high quality. People want the best idea possible of what they are getting and as they say a photo is worth a thousand words.

Market Early and Often

Getting organic clicks to your Amazon product is great and people finding it using the search function is when you know you have gotten a successful product. When first selling your first private label product though you need to market and get people to your product any way you can. Use all social media. You can have a Facebook page for your brand or a Twitter page. You can post things like package previews or have polls to interact with potential customers. The more they see your name and brand out there the more likely they will be able to buy your product. Brand recognition is extremely important in the private label world, especially if you want to have more than one successful product. Your own website is also important because that is the best way to build email list and get repeat customers. Having a spot on the internet that is designed specifically for you makes it so people recognize you as more legitimate.

 

Set Reasonable Goals

If you are not driven, then it is really hard to have a successful product. That is why I said early on it helps if you have a love for the product, but you don’t want to set expectations to high. When estimating revenue in the begging and thru your whole business you always want to estimate low. One month you may not sell as much, so estimating low will prevent issues in cash flow. When it comes to cost you want to do the opposite and estimate high. You do not want a surprise shipping increases to cause you surprises in your business. Having a realistic budget will ensure that you have enough money at all times to reorder products and keeping track of sells will help you make sure you are ordering enough product.

Repricing Tools

                Lastly, you may want to use repricing tools. These tools change the price on your product based on specific requirements you set. They are good to help keep your price competitive when the competition changes their price. Some good repricing tools are Seller Dynamics, Repricer Express, and Teikametrics. They are easy to use, but powerful tools that allow you to do a lot when it comes to resetting prices. You can also use repricing tools to raise the price if certain conditions are met so this keeps you from losing money by selling to cheap.

selling your first private label

Conclusion

Using these 8 strategies will help you in selling your first private label product on Amazon. It will also help you build a brand and make it so you are successful long term. With private label the doors are open for you to sell any product you want and as long as you are willing to put the effort in you can be successful selling any product.

 

Author Bio

Sarah Kaiser is a digital marketing manager at casino global sourcing, the sourcing division of a French retailer Group Casino. She’s in charge of godirek.com, the digital product catalog of casino global sourcing, which offers helps and handles inquiries about private label manufacturing and sourcing. She’s a fan of water sports and has studied business management in France. Her works have been published on dozens of websites and blogs.