FMCG Category [Caterpillar] Metamorphosis

In 2007 I wrote a thesis asking the very serious question “Private label: The death of the brand.” At that time it really was just Private label vs. the leading brand. In many cases, it was a David vs. Goliath situation. 

Many thousands of words later I came to the conclusion that brands would never die, they would just have to work much harder and very differently to succeed. At the time, private label was emerging from the shadows. Often viewed in the past as the poorer quality relation to big brands, private label still had stigma to shake off. 

Then came the crash of 2008 and many of us were forced to reshape our views of private label and notably private label within the discounters. A situation of national need added to an unwavering and crystal clear focus on product benchmarking by retailers caused a step change in private label focus. As a private label expert, I can confirm that actually, the quality of most private label products is as good if not better in some cases than the leading brand. In 2007, we didn’t shout about this as an industry.

As a private label supplier, supplying Aldi felt tangibly different to working with the Grocers. The conversation was always direct, efficient and based around the quality of your product specification not necessarily always just a me too of the leading brand. 

Aldi has worked with laser sharp focus to remove the ‘quality’ barrier from consumers’ minds and has opened up a completely new FMCG landscape. In 2021, it’s no longer David vs. Goliath, its Colin vs. Cuthbert, Goliath hasn’t been seen for a while, apparently he has been reformatting the VLOOKUP’s in his JBP.  Two Private label brands which act like leading brands, indeed are leading brands, fighting about a caterpillar. Other retailer caterpillars are also involved and potentially shaking in their boots (16 boots required per caterpillar apparently, don’t advise googling this, some of the legs are not legs..)

Still passionate about Private label I cannot wait to see how this plays out, the metamorphosis of private label is constant and moving at light speed. Private label plays such an important role in our industry; the future really is bright and exciting, literally dying to mention butterflies here.