White labels are used by some websites to facilitate a successful brand for offering its services
The name comes from the image of a white label made on the package wherein the marketer can put its trade dress. The origin dates back to vinyl records. At that time, DJs used to take out the label from a known record, concealing the actual source of that record from other DJs. The removal of labels from DJ records popularizes the term white label record.
Generic electronic products produced in bulk, like TVs and DVD players, generally use white label production. There are companies that also own a sub-brand for their products, which represent the brands used solely by those companies. For example, Brand-D may sell the same DVD player model-D which brand-E sells as a model-D.
White labels are used by some websites to facilitate a successful brand for offering its services without investing in the development of infrastructure and technology. To illustrate, until recently, Waterstones website was run by Amazon.co.uk, and LoveFilm run the DVD Rental services of TESCO. A majority of store brand or supermarket private brand products are offered by companies which change only the labels of the products and then sell them to various supermarkets. Besides, a few manufacturers produce generic brand labels at low-cost, with just the products name, like Cola.
Sometimes, large banks take the responsibility of running smaller banks’ credit-card operations. Cards are issued and processed by larger banks in the form of white label cards, usually for a fee. This enables the smaller banks to run their own branded credit cards without investing in the infrastructure that would otherwise lead to high operating cost.
