Not-so-easy Steps Toward Private Branding

Tired of buying Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, or even Nike? Want to give your own brand a shot? It can be done and its not as expensive as you think. I started my own private label gift line for less than $500 ten years ago There remains a great mystique to branding, though there shouldn't be. it is simply putting your brand on a service or product.
Information on branding used to be a very well-kept secret. After the Internet was founded, the cat was let out of the bag.
If you are planning to outsource, that is, let a manufacturer and/or dropshipper handle it all and you simply put your pretty face and name on the label, get ready to spend a little money, keep up a website, advertise it, promote it, blog it, and every other nifty tool you can handle.
Since I was on a shoestring, I started with a print-on-demand company such as Cafe Press and a few others. I didn't even have to pay for the web space, simply digitally-design my products and they did the rest. I left them for awhile to form my own stores, but they grew and added hundreds of more products, and improved their quality and service so I recently launched Rick London Collection there and it is already successful. It is merely another outshoot of Londons Times Cartoons. There is no right way to launch a private label business. It all depends on you, what you want to do, what your goals are, and your style of doing it.
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Though I wanted my Rick London label on everything, I was not a trust fund baby. And like many entrepreneurs, my dreams were a bit larger than my pocketbook, but I still felt I had the right to dictate quality control. So until Cafe Press got their act together, which admittedly they finally did, I began using a Denver print-on-demand named Printfection to launch several niche stores including RickLondonwear . It turned out to be a good idea.
Another incentive to purchase the product, and it is a big one, is that I decided to offer engraving on the cups with the senders company name and URL for only $2 instead of the $10-20 that it often costs. This makes for a most unique and personal corporate gift for several reasons. The first is, one has to ask oneself, what is one of the first thing someone sees when they wake up in the morning (besides the irritating alarm clock)? Their favorite coffee cup. And trust me, with the right artwork or cartoon, it soon becomes a favorite.
Personalization and corporate gift-giving are andquot;the big thing nowandquot;. There is no reason not to offer personalization. It is inexpensive and the customers love it. I decided to offer it for $2 on every product at Londons Times Superstore. Each buyer gets his/her company name and URL on the product. So, say it is a coffee gift basket or mug, their name and a funny cartoon is the first thing their client sees upon awakening. Not bad psychology.
So the Internet, in many ways, has leveled the playing field. The time to brand yourself is now. All the information is there. All you need do is utilize it. If not for the Internet, there would be no Londons Times Cartoons, RickLondonwear, LTSuperstore, RickLondonCollection or many of the smaller niche stores I have opened, all branded under my name. If I can do it, believe me, you can
I'm not sure I could have made it without the Internet, maybe so; maybe locally or regionally. But it sure is fun to say, travel to Martinique and people know who I am, or at least what Londons Times Cartoons is.

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Sassy cartoonist e-tailer Rick London has added yet another unique gift comic collectible store to his repertoire of offbeat funny gift and casual wear store, Rick London Collection online shopping and unique content version here.

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