[HN Gopher] Show HN: GhostLabel - Start your own coffee product ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: GhostLabel - Start your own coffee product line
        
       Author : mcasey_gl
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2022-10-10 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ghostlabel.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ghostlabel.io)
        
       | OrangeMonkey wrote:
       | What is up with the 'custom coffee brands' that seem to be pushed
       | nonstop the last 6 months?
       | 
       | It seems like every youtuber that I watch now has their own
       | coffee brand that they ask you to buy. Heck - a vtuber rabbit was
       | pushing their coffee brand too. Did I just miss the memo?
        
         | superfrank wrote:
         | Super easy to white label on demand and hard for most people to
         | measure actual quality, would be my guess.
         | 
         | I assume there's some company out there that is basically drop
         | shipping coffee and it's all coming from the same place with
         | different branding. It probably costs the youtubers almost
         | nothing to set up and the drop shipping company does everything
         | and then forwards some percentage of the sale to the youtuber
         | so it just runs on auto pilot. It's easy money if you already
         | have an established brand.
        
         | status200 wrote:
         | This is a bit of conjecture on my part, but I see many
         | "entrepreneurs" who go on vacation or otherwise encounter the
         | large margin from exploitable cheap labor on cloud forest crops
         | like coffee and chocolate (palm oil and others as well), and
         | cannot resist setting up a co-packing operation and using their
         | network to shoehorn it into grocery stores or shill it to their
         | followers. It is a relatively easy "wealth expansion" play if
         | you are decent at marketing or already have an audience.
         | 
         | There is a large spectrum from slave-owning cacao operations to
         | fair trade and regenerative operations, but for sure the margin
         | is a part of the draw.
        
         | jabroni_salad wrote:
         | It's easy print-on-demand merchandise (you dont have to worry
         | about warehousing or any other logistic factor) and is more
         | interesting than the usual POD goods like tshirts and acrylic
         | pins.
        
       | T3RMINATED wrote:
        
       | sigmonsays wrote:
       | any example products we can see ?
       | 
       | Seems like some service like this just helps flood the market
       | with crap products set at high prices.
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | There are some photos of unlabeled products when you select a
         | specific product to design, however you will need to provide
         | your own label design to the manufacturer (although some can
         | help with this as well).
         | 
         | Our service should actually lower the costs of food products
         | you see in the market, as we have transparent pricing and the
         | ability to quickly evaluate different manufacturers in terms of
         | quality, price, location, and experience.
        
       | DaveFr wrote:
       | Is it good coffee? That seems important.
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | You can get whatever coffee quality you want.
        
       | doctorhandshake wrote:
       | Poorly-kept secret about consumer packaged goods: you can launch
       | your own brand of just about anything tomorrow if you don't care
       | about sourcing. There's a US domestic factory making just about
       | anything you can dream of that isn't electronic, and, if you want
       | something more specific, cheaper, or electronic, there's Alibaba.
       | 
       | You can white label your own shampoo, sunglasses, supplements,
       | anything, and even if you do the sometimes quite hard work of
       | making sure your product is world-class, it often still doesn't
       | change the fact that once you have the product in hand, you're
       | now in the marketing business. This holds true even if you're
       | tapping a captive customer base with demonstrated search intent
       | as in the case of Amazon. High quality product helps, but in the
       | end it's a marketing business.
       | 
       | This site doesn't appear to make things much easier than just
       | googling '[x product] contract manufacturer' and picking up the
       | phone. The product is the easy part.
        
         | kwonkicker wrote:
         | You just described 80% of Amazon.
        
           | doctorhandshake wrote:
           | I think it extends to all D2C CPG, even ones that appear to
           | have sourcing front of mind, or at least claim to. Branding,
           | design, and marketing can come together to make it very
           | difficult for even a discerning consumer to tell the
           | difference between what is effectively a generic white label
           | and a thoughtfully-sourced product. There was a good
           | discussion about this on HN in re: headphones recently but it
           | applies to just about everything in the world of manufactured
           | consumer goods.
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback! You certainly can google co-packers
         | and call them yourself - however, we make it a whole lot easier
         | for everyone involved - we take care of food safety paperwork,
         | verify manufacturers, allow you to compare copacker offers,
         | provide a systematic way of communicating what you are making,
         | and allow you to make payments online--among several other
         | services.
         | 
         | I would say that no part of launching a new food or beverage
         | product is easy, including contract manufacturing. We have
         | heard too many horror stories of shady co-packers running away
         | with peoples money, or faking their paperwork, or just being
         | disorganized. We will be building more tools and partnering
         | with other businesses to help brands with the other aspects of
         | launching a new food brand - this is only the start.
        
           | doctorhandshake wrote:
           | Yeah sorry this was not intended as feedback about the
           | product - although if I were to give you a bit of strategy
           | advice it's this - if you want your customers to succeed,
           | focus on creating truly valuable training and lessons around
           | marketing. You've made it easy to get the product, their job
           | is to get customers. Help them do that with quality content
           | marketing about marketing the products you help them produce.
        
       | geuis wrote:
       | The signup bit that appears right after clicking a product is a
       | turn off. I have no idea what this product is supposed to look
       | like. I'm not going to sign up to some random site just hoping to
       | see more. Provide more details before asking for visitors to
       | create accounts.
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | Thank you for the feedback! You have complete control over what
         | your product looks and tastes like. Sign up is free! You only
         | pay when your product is made and delivered.
        
           | petee wrote:
           | Show HN is supposed to be demonstrable; having to click a
           | layer to to find out everything is hidden is a little bait
           | and switch. You've really only shown you have a signup
           | form...
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
        
             | Kailhus wrote:
             | 100%. Nothing to see here folks, let's pack it up!
        
       | chatterhead wrote:
       | Sweet! This is like a distilled version of Alibaba with out the
       | bullshit.
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | Thank you!
        
       | toomuchtodo wrote:
       | Assume I have an existing bean supplier for a built brand I want
       | to pull into your network, and don't mind if others leverage them
       | for their own brands, in order to outsource more of what your org
       | offers (to go hands off). Is that possible?
        
         | mcasey_gl wrote:
         | Yes - if I am understanding you correctly - your manufacturer
         | can create an account on our platform and find jobs.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-10-10 23:02 UTC)