If you have spent any amount of time looking through our online store you know that we sell bulk soap and soap making supplies. You might have also noticed that we do not sell packaging with our Botanie brand on it. This is because we sell our product to be white labeled. But, what even is white labeling? Continue reading to find out!
How it Works
Also called private labeling, white labeling is when a company allows another company to sell their product under their own brand so it appears to have been created by the purchasing brand. White labeling is more common than you think and is done in almost every industry: everywhere from computer software to canned goods. When someone buys bulk soap from Botanie Soap and sells it with their own brand and packaging they are using the white labeling aspect of our product. This allows our customers to take advantage of the expertise and quality of Botanie’s product while still enjoying their own branding. Customers love to purchase items created by the brand they love and trust but most companies do not have the time or expertise to create all of their own products. This is where white labeling comes in to provide quality, already produced products that companies can trust to sell to their customers as their own.
Who Should Sell White Labeled Products
White labeled soap from Botanie Soap can be used in many different situations.
- Creating your own soap brand to open an ecommerce shop
- Adding your branded soap to your current line of products
- Selling your branded soap at your current boutique or market
- Placing your branded soap in the restroom or kitchen of your business
- Giving your own brand of soap to customers as a gift
- Selling your own soap brand at local events like farmers’ markets
There are many ways white labeled and privately branded soap from Botanie can be sold to develop a new company or enhance your current business.
How to Get Started
To get started with Botanie Soap, visit our online shop and try one of our sample sets. Once you receive the sample set, be sure to actually try our soap! We are confident that the quality of our soap will meet your standards.
After you have smelled each of our delicious scents and have decided on which ones will go best with your brand, visit our online store once again to purchase your bulk soap.
Design your packaging and sell your product. Throughout this process, please do not hesitate to reach out to our customer service team. We strive to supply a great experience for our customers and always do our best to make the process easy. We have also developed a marketing guide that you will receive when you sign up for our email list and a page of our website devoted to great media assets that will help supply you with information that will help your soap business succeed.
Communication Advice
We run across the evidence pretty frequently, customers using product photos and descriptions verbatim from our website. If they ever ask, we advise against it. Strongly.
Not that we don’t understand the reasoning behind using what we have. It makes perfect sense to use our pictures, our descriptions, and our viewpoints. Content development is time consuming, labor intensive, and it’s second nature to very few. On the other hand, Botanie content – photos and words – is all right there.
There’s a Downside
Here’s the downside. You might be giving your secret away. Let’s say the soap you’re selling is made by us. You have a brand people are starting to know. You have a nice Kraft-brown belly band and a logo that does all it can to scream handmade. On your website, you’ve used photos from our website and you’ve copied our descriptions verbatim.
Let’s say what you’ve copied becomes an issue with a particular online/offline marketplace. If the only requirement for their Handmade Soap department was soap made by hand, you’d be fine. Turns out this marketplace also requires the soap be made by the person selling it. Some other seller got to wondering, and Googled the text from your soap descriptions. Guess who came up, in addition to you? Us.
Google Knows All
There’s the downside. While you might never have said in print, “I make this myself,” it’s always a nice indirect assumption to take advantage of, when people think – or like to think – that you do. When the Google search includes us, and the someone wondering makes their discovery known to the marketplace at large, your brand can be in violation, even if by oversight, and be further seen as ungenuine. Exactly the kind of attention that can undo the good work you’ve done building your business.
It’s only a little more complicated to search the internet for photos. The insight is, be yourself and you’ll be the only one people will find.
Hints and How-To’s
We know that’s easier said than done. It’s also easier than it’s made to appear, sometimes. Chances are, you already know who your competition is, and you know other sources of products like yours. Take advantage of that knowledge.
Whenever you find a soap or skincare site you like the feel of, spend some time to find out why. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can do good research. Identify what you like about other product descriptions to put together your own. Don’t copy. Let what you’ve read and liked influence you when you write what’s yours. If that’s still easier said than done, check out this blog on writing product descriptions that sell. Like all blogs, this one’s a source of ideas and inspiration – good ones – not of rigid guidelines you’re required to follow.
What About Photos?
If you’re going to charge people for the photographs you take, you should have a really good camera. If you’re not, and you want to take product photos for your web stores, there are any number of smart phones with cameras plenty good enough. The problem for lots of us taking good photographs, especially the kind that will be the face of your business, is being able to control your lighting.
You’re in luck. There’s YouTube, and all kinds of videos on how to build a simple light box, where you can take professional-looking photographs of your products. How-to videos on YouTube rely a lot on personality. Rather than choose for you, here’s a link to a YouTube search results page (“how to make a photo light box”) where you can choose the personality you enjoy, while learning how to make a light box simply and cheaply.
The point of them all is, you don’t have to settle for stock photos or bad photos. You can put together a decent photo-taking environment and take great-looking photos that are absolutely yours.