The answer is – nothing. If it’s your idea, your concept, or a product your business created. Private label is another name for a brand, and there is nothing wrong with brands.
My Greek Basket is a brand, and we are in love with the idea that once prompted us to create it – introducing the best Greece has to offer – be it products or experiences, to the US market.
We must admit that we had contemplated the idea of selling products that we offer under a private label of our brand name, but we dropped it as the result of research we had conducted prior to making our purchasing choices. Take olive oil. There are groves with trees several hundred years old meaning someone have worked there all these years keeping the tradition, making a choice of growing and harvesting methods, olive varieties to use, pressing procedure and other steps leading to whatever it takes to get the best end product possible. And then there are numerous contests to take part in for a product to get its national or international recognition. And if a product turns out to become, in fact, the best in its class would a proud manufacturer want to give up its name on the label in exchange of new markets’ presence?
In most cases, the answer is no. Our research shows that a private label is often a cover of a mass market generic product, missing the sole and heart of a dedicated maker where quantity far surpasses quality. Like parents of successful kids, successful producers of a fine product want to show off their relationship to their “child” (a product, in our case) as much as possible and are not willing to give up on it even in the perspective of attracting sales on new markets.
In many cases these producers pride themselves of being open about their production process from start to finish, something that does provide a great support to a product and whatever characteristics it claims to have.
In one of his videos dedicated to olive oil and how to know a “real” olive oil from a counterfeit one Dr Eric Berg, DC, a world-famous healthy keto advocate, speaking about one of his favorite extra-virgin olive oils of Italian origin, seems to give a big importance to the fact that he had visited the farm of the olive oil producer and seen HOW the oil was being made.
A visit to an olive oil farm and seeing methods of olive trees cultivation, organic farming protocols, mill pressing standards and equipment can provide a living proof to whatever a product claims to be, something impossible to achieve for a private label product which origin is often concealed. There are some cases where a private label is used to hide a manufacturer’s standards and practices that don’t exactly comply with declared product characteristics.
By following one of the principles of My Greek Basket, that is paying a tribute to those Greek producers who spent years on creating and fine-tuning their products to be recognized as some of the best in Greece, like the olive oil by The Olive Temple, we want to support the Greek tradition and the effort these hard-working people have put in years of work resulting in superior quality products. And yes, these are the brands one can actually find and buy in Greece.
To visit the farm of our olive oil producer, The Olive Temple, in Ancient Olympia please visit: https://www.mygreekbasket.com/pages/copy-of-experience-greece for itineraries and booking
On photo: the Karabelas family, The Olive Temple brand owner, on the cover of a Greek magazine listing 50 Best Olive Oils of Greece.
