Own brand
An own-brand product is sold under the seller’s own brand name rather than its maker’s, and is also called private label, own label or shop brand.
- Private label
- Own label
- Shop brand
- Store brand
What it means
Own-brand goods are made by one company and sold under another’s name, often a retailer’s or a distributor’s. Google calls them private-label products, “produced by one company, but relabelled by the company selling it”.1
That changes the barcode. GS1, the organisation behind barcode numbers, says a change to the primary brand on an item “requires assignment of a new GTIN”.2 So an own-brand version should not share its maker’s barcode: it has its own, or none at all.
Where there is none, Google says a shop-brand product “may not have a GTIN, and if so you don’t need to submit one”; the brand and MPN go in instead.1
Think of it like this
A supermarket’s own cornflakes are the everyday case. Another company may well have made them, but the box carries the supermarket’s name and the supermarket’s own barcode.
For example
A distributor relabels a Nashwick basin mixer as its own Lowmere tap. The two taps are physically the same, but the Lowmere one carries a different barcode, or none, so they are two products, and whether to list both is a buying decision.
Why it matters
Not to be confused with
Own brand differs from unbranded. An own-brand product has a brand, the seller’s; an unbranded one has none, and on eBay its Brand can be given as Unbranded.3
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. GTIN [gtin].
- GS1. GTIN Management Standard: 6. Primary brand.
- eBay Developers Program. AddItem (Trading API reference).