Advertisers and marketers have more tools in their kits than ever before when it comes to promotional products. It seems that just about every business under the sun has coffee mugs that don the company name or logo and pharmaceutical companies have virtually cornered the market on branded click pens and sticky pads. And although these particular items are ubiquitous in the corporate world, many more opportunities for branding and private labeling products have arisen of late. Now there are a whole host of companies (many of them web-based) that sell a wide variety of products that can be branded to suit the needs of your company or individual promotional campaign. These kinds of companies typically have two types of clientele- those people who have a particular product branded for their own (or their company’s use) and those who have a particular product branded with an eye to reselling it. This is often referred to as private labeling. Private labeling is an advantageous method for small companies for a number of reasons. The primary advantage is that the company does not have to manufacture the product, which can cost a huge sum when you consider tooling parts, research and development, and all of the other costs involved in creating a product from scratch. As an example, a cosmetics company may choose to purchase a bottle that is already on the market in which to sell their makeup. Rather than incurring the costs of molding a brand new bottle, setting up a machine to have it tooled, and then ramping up for manufacture, they simply adhere labels to bottles that already exist. Many researchers and designers and early stage companies figure out ways to save money by taking advantage of promotional products that are already on the market.
