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Comment by Cerium | Hacker News Reader

Trader Joe's is the closest to Amazon in this regard. They introduce new products as the name brand, the best sellers are cloned and then replaced with the store brands.

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Costco does too - Kirkland is their own brand.

Same with Kroger's - Private Reserve

I think Kirkland is just Costco making a bulk deal with one of the manufacturers and slapping Kirkland brand on it.

It’s the same with the other retailers. They do not own their own factories.

But Amazon Basics doesn't own the factories too - at least not yet.

Same with Trader Joe's

This does happen. Many regional chains do own there own factories however. Many of them produce both store brands and 'premiums brands under license. It's a complicated business.

Same with Trader Joe's store brands, or at least that was the case in the past as I recall reading in The Fearless Flyer.

I think Trader Joes does that too?

But Trader Joe's doesn't sell anything that is name brand? The whole store is store brand.

They stock plenty of third party Wine in my area, although the beer is all Trader Joe labeled. There are a handful of other things that aren't Trader Joe store brand or completely generic (yet?).

Not that it would matter here, the law in question sets the market cap miles above where Trader Joe's is.

I had forgotten about the beer/wine, as the one I've been going to doesn't have that section. With the alcohol oligopoly it makes sense they can't make house brands so easily.

There are a handful of non TJs brand items. Not many, but some.

They absolutely sell other brands, my local TJs has a huge stack of White Claw in the beer aisle.

Aldi is similar, which is kind of interesting because Trader Joes is one of the Aldis. I always wonder how they get away with blatant trademark infringement. They come up with similar product design for the purpose of confusing consumers. I assume they have deals with most of the name brand products, or their parent companies.

I don't know about Trader Joe's specifically, but a lot of "Store Brands" are made in the same place as the name brand. It's just a giant game of price discrimination.

This is very true. I worked at Traders many years ago and at least back then the store brands were often made by the same name brand company.

Agreed. I never worked there but have shopped there for many years, along with the other usual places like Whole Foods and Safeway. A game I used to play was "spot the TJ's store brand item under its own name at another store."

One example is TJ's French Village plain nonfat yogurt, which is very obviously Nancy's yogurt from Springfield Creamery in Oregon. Same exact taste and texture in the same packaging. (Nancy's used to come in clear plastic tubs like TJ's. A few years ago they switched to opaque white for their name brand, but it's still the same product.)

Another is some of the frozen Indian foods, which Whole Foods carries under the manufacturer's brand name.

From what I've read, TJ's doesn't infringe. They simply pay the original manufacturer to make a run of the product with TJ's label on it.

Part of the agreement seems to be that the manufacturer goes out of their way to make a worse version for TJ's. Honestly they should be taken to task for flooding the market with fake competition, but that applies to the majority of brands in these days of megaconsolidation.

I don't think that is the case. As I noted in a sibling comment, many of TJ's store brands are identical to the name brand.

Buy a tub of the French Village yogurt I mentioned, and also buy the same Nancy's yogurt at Whole Foods, and you won't find any difference between the two.

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