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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

This does exist and is fairly common, at least in retail, otherwise known as "White label products". Costco's Kirkland brand is a fantastic example of this, where they rebrand the same products such as a particular SKU of vodka under their own Kirkland brand.

A lot of in-house brands are just white labeled versions of a branded product. The rub is that not all are high-quality brands like Costco's

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Kirkland brand vodka is indeed a gem in the rough. I just wish there was a brand of "white label products", where every single item is consistently good, because the range of quality when it comes to each individual item within a "white label" is still pretty high. Though I realize that at this point, it would become a brand of its own.

Kirkland has a single malt that is, with surprise, not worse than St George. Not as good as Glen Turret but, you'd have a second dram.

I was always afraid to buy "white label" alcohol that wasn't super basic stuff like vodka or cheap wine, but with this rec, I will definitely give their single malt a try. Thank you!

Unfortunately, as you mention, not all are high-quality.

If I want good white-label vodka I go to Costco.

Good white-label monitor arms apparently come from AmazonBasics.

Good white-label socks come from a third place.

Even worse than the fact that these different classes of products are in different places is that even items in the same class from the same place are completely different quality. Costco's vodka might be fine, their whiskey might be awful. Monitor arms from amazonbasics are fine but their mic arms are garbage.

There's no manufacturer of consistently very high quality consumer goods. There's not even a manufacturer I can point to and say "everything they make, even in their narrow field, is fantastic".

And that sucks.

Sears used to be that, back in the day (not recently - say, maybe pre-2000). "Quality at a decent price" was their motto, and they did pretty well at it. You could by clothes, tools, appliances, and none of it would fall apart on you. They also had, perhaps not white-label brands, but their own brands. Craftsman tools were pretty solid.

There might be an opening for someone to do that again. There's a cost to going to 17 places for 17 things. Even if you're online shopping and getting free delivery on everything, there's still a cost in terms of time and aggravation. It might be worth something if some business solved that.

Unfortunately, I don't see anybody who would do so. Amazon would have to control quality of everything they sell (or start a premium brand that was actually premium). Sears has been irrelevant for a couple of decades, and soon will be history. Costco seems to me to have the best chance of pulling this off - their quality is reasonable-to-good on most things we've tried there, but there's a lot we haven't tried. Still, they seem to have the best handle on consistent quality out of any of the current contenders.

I find Kirkland products to all be of pretty high quality. Especially the food. And you can get Kirkland socks, home goods, just about everything. Though I don't think they do electronics.

There was an expose a few years ago on olive oil. Kirkland brand olive oil was one of the only brands to actually be pure olive oil. And that was comparing it to many Italian "high end" brands.

Since talking monitor arms and mic stands and narrow fields, how about ‘monoprice’?

I remember seeing in-person about 10 years ago, that a staff editor at a well-known cooking/lifestyle mag was evaluating different prepared food item recipes to be sold under the Kirkland brand. I don't know if they do this kind of testing anymore but it made me feel better about eating their pesto instead of just using a blender.

Also in Modernist Bread, it's noted that the baguette scoring at the Seattle Costco was better than the scoring at many Parisian bakeries.

Most grocery store house brand corn flakes are made by Kellogg's. If you pour a bowl of the store brand and the Kellogg's, you'll notice there is a difference: the Kellogg's flakes are larger. The store brand box is mostly the corn flakes that met a lower quality standard but are still of acceptable quality. Wouldn't be surprised if this is often the case with other white label or store brands.

Grocery stores will also do this with things like rice.

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