Private-label electric toothbrush: who owns what, from artwork to first container

A private-label project rarely fails because the factory could not make the product. It fails because something in the chain had no owner: a trademark that was never cleared, a WEEE number nobody registered, a label field left blank because each side assumed the other would supply it. None of these surface until the goods are already on the water.

The fix is not a longer contract. It is deciding early, in writing, which of four things each side holds — two that are yours whatever the quotation says, and two that belong to the factory. Asking the factory to carry one of yours is where the trouble usually starts.

What “private label” covers, and what it does not#

The term gets used for three arrangements with different obligations, and the risk difference between them is larger than the price difference.

• Private label. You take an existing product, put your brand on it and sell it. Tooling stays with the factory and the exterior design is not yours.
• OEM. You bring the design — shape, structure, sometimes the electronics — and the factory builds to your specification. The note on cost structure explains why tooling buried inside a unit price is a problem rather than a convenience.
• ODM. You modify an existing platform: a new shell colour, a changed button layout, your own packaging and firmware settings. Our OEM and ODM page sets out what each level of change costs in tooling and in certification.

The retail box looks identical in all three. What differs is who owns what on the day the relationship ends — and that is the part a quotation never tells you.

Boundary 1: brand, design rights and the look of the product#

The trademark, the brand name, the packaging graphics and the claims printed on the box are yours. That is the point of the exercise. The caveat is the shape of the product itself: in a private-label or ODM arrangement the exterior design normally belongs to the factory or to whoever the factory licensed it from, and buying units does not transfer it.

If your product is distinguishable from a competitor's only by the logo, you do not have a brand — you have a colourway, and the factory is free to sell that colourway to the next buyer. Sometimes that is acceptable; say so deliberately rather than discovering it in year two. If it is not, the answer is a tooling investment that makes the shape your own, or an exclusivity clause, and both have a price. Clear the trademark in each target market before committing to a name — in the EU and the US that is a cheap online search, and a conflict found after the plates are cut is a reprint plus a rename.

Boundary 2: tooling and the technical file#

Moulds, fixtures, jigs and production programmes are the factory's unless you paid for them separately and the paperwork says so. Three things to settle in writing rather than in conversation:

1. Whose name is on the tool, and where does it physically sit? Ownership and possession are different things. A tool you own but cannot move out of the building is a negotiating position, not an asset.
2. Is tooling a separate line, or amortised into the unit price? If it is amortised, you cannot tell whether you have finished paying for it, and you cannot take it with you when you leave.
3. Who holds the technical file? Drawings, bill of materials, firmware version, test records. In a private-label arrangement this stays with the factory, so a second source would have to rebuild the product rather than copy it.

Boundary 3: who is the responsible legal entity#

This is the boundary most often misread, and the one that stops shipments. In the EU, the UK and most markets built around a conformity mark, the obligation attaches to the entity that places the product on that market, and that entity must normally be established inside it. In practice that means the importer, or your own local company — not the factory. The manufacturer's name and address on the label is the factory's or the importer's depending on the arrangement, and whichever it is has to be true.

A factory can always supply component test reports and a test summary for the model. That is genuinely useful and you should ask for it. It is not the same as holding the market marking, and a supplier who says “we are CE certified, so you are covered” is describing something that does not exist in that form — see the market-by-market certification note for who has to hold what. The same logic drives WEEE and extended producer responsibility registrations in Europe: they attach to the party placing the goods on that market, they are per country, and they normally require a locally established entity.

Boundary 4: the documents that travel with the goods#

Some documents are the factory's to produce and yours to check. Some are yours to produce and the factory merely prints. Getting the direction wrong is how a container ends up held at the port while two offices exchange emails.

• The factory produces: component test reports, the UN 38.3 summary for the cell actually used, the MSDS, a transport assessment per model, packing lists, the packaging drop-test record.
• You produce: the importer name-and-address block for the label, the market registration numbers, the country-of-origin statement, the recycling marks your market requires.
• Both, on the same file: the retail artwork. Every field on that box has an owner, and the artwork file is the only place where a missing owner becomes visible before the plate is cut.

Where projects actually stall#

• The label field nobody owned. The importer address is blank because the buyer had not yet incorporated the local company. The plates are cut anyway. Reprinting the retail carton is now the buyer's cost, and the schedule slip lands on the buyer's account.
• The exclusivity that was assumed. The buyer believed a colour and a mould were theirs; the factory sells the same shell into the same market three months later. Nothing was breached, because nothing was written.
• The registration discovered late. A marketplace demands an EPR or WEEE number at listing. The number is tied to a country the buyer never registered in, and the lead time is counted in weeks.

All three are avoidable with one document. Before the plate is cut, confirm in writing: every field that must appear on the retail pack and who supplies each one; the importer or responsible-entity name and address spelled exactly as it will be printed; which market marks apply and the registration numbers behind them; and who owns the artwork file, in what editable format you will receive it.

The trial-order sequence places this step at the right point in the schedule. The FAQ covers the questions buyers ask most often, and the pricing page shows how the quantity tiers line up once the first order size is known.