Private Label
Private label got a designer. What does that do to your brand?
The store brand next to you stopped looking like a store brand. Your pack now has to earn the tier you charge for, and it can only earn it in the hand.
The store brand next to you stopped looking like a store brand. Walmart is redesigning roughly 10,000 Great Value items, Target’s owned brands are closing in on $4 billion each, and premium private label is the fastest-growing part of the shelf. The shopper’s old shortcut, national means nice and private means fallback, is breaking on purpose.
For years, the shelf sorted itself. The national brand looked like the national brand: better photography, more confident color, a pack that clearly cost money to make. The private label looked like the private label. That visual gap did quiet work for you. It let the brand coast a little, because the shopper’s eye did the positioning for free.
That sort is breaking, and it’s breaking on purpose.
The shortcut that just broke
The shopper’s shortcut, redrawn.
In April 2026, Walmart began the first full redesign of Great Value in more than a decade: roughly 10,000 items, rolling out over about two years, starting with snacks. Prices and recipes stay the same. What changed is how the brand carries itself. Walmart’s own research found the reason, shoppers liked the quality and the price but didn’t feel proud to display the product at home. The redesign is aimed straight at that feeling.
When the value option shows up with modern type, ownable color, consistent claim placement, and photography that looks like the brand spent money, the shopper’s shortcut stops firing. The gap you were leaning on narrowed. And it narrowed deliberately, funded by a retailer that sells your product and a rival to it on the same shelf.
The eye did the sorting
National meant nice. Private label meant the value fallback. The visual gap positioned both packs for free, and the brand could coast on it.
Private label is designed to be chosen
Modern type, ownable color, consistent claims, photography that looks funded. The shortcut stops firing, and the gap you leaned on is gone on purpose.
This isn’t one retailer having a moment
The money says it’s structural.
US store-brand sales hit a record $282.8 billion in 2025, up about $9 billion year over year, and store-brand dollars grew 3.3%, nearly triple the 1.2% for national brands (PLMA, using Circana data). Private label has outgrown national brands in both dollars and units for three straight years.
US private-label sales, 2025
a record, and the fastest-growing part of the shelf
Up ~$9B year over year, growing 3.3% vs 1.2% for national brands. Source: PLMA / Circana.
The growth isn’t at the bottom. Premium tiers now account for about 40% of private-label spend, up 3.8 points since 2019 (Numerator), and 82% of households earning more than $100,000 say they’ve increased how often they buy store brands (Alvarez & Marsal, Fall 2025). These aren’t trade-down shoppers. They’re the exact consumer you build a premium price around.
And the design investment is everywhere.
Great Value redesign, plus bettergoods
The first Great Value redesign in over a decade covers roughly 10,000 items over about two years. bettergoods, launched in 2024, was bought by more than a quarter of US households within about a year and was tracking toward $500 million in sales (Numerator), a designed premium tier a Great Value shopper can trade up into without leaving the aisle.
Good & Gather, and 525 trademarks
Good & Gather is closing in on $4 billion in annual sales. Target filed more US trademark applications than any other company in 2024, 525 of them, its third year running at the top, as it expands more than 40 owned brands.
Largest-ever packaging refresh
In September 2025, Aldi ran its largest-ever packaging refresh, consolidating roughly 90 brands down to 26, a tighter, more confident system under its own name.
The design gap between national brands and store brands has closed. More than 80% of US consumers now rate the quality of private-brand food as the same or better than national brands (McKinsey). The shopper already believes the product is good. The pack is the last thing still asking them to pay more.
The pack is the last thing still asking the shopper to pay more.This isn’t one retailer having a moment
What actually got harder
Two things, at once.
The premium has to be visible before the shopper thinks about it
When the store brand looked like a budget option, your price gap explained itself. The shopper didn’t need a reason to pay more; the visual hierarchy gave them one. Now the store brand looks considered, so the shopper is doing the math out loud: what exactly am I paying extra for? If the answer isn’t legible on the pack, in the color, the finish, the structure, the weight, the gap becomes the reason to switch, not the reason to stay.
Distinctiveness stopped being optional
Only about 15% of brand assets are genuinely distinctive, meaning a shopper can identify the brand from that element alone, with the name covered (Ipsos and Jones Knowles Ritchie, across 5,000-plus assets). A decade of minimalist redesigns spent a lot of that equity down. Cleaner isn’t always more recognizable; in many cases, simplification moved brands closer to the visual language of private label, not further from it. Now the store brand is building its own recognizable system, and the brand that reads as generic is the one that loses the glance.
What to do about it
Treat the private label like a competitor with a design team.
Because that’s what it is. Four moves, in order.
Walk the store brand’s set first
Hold the retailer’s premium private label in your category the way the buyer does every morning. If you haven’t held it, you don’t yet know what you’re up against.
Run a distinctiveness audit
With the logo covered, can a shopper still name you from one element? If the same asset could sit on the store brand without looking wrong, it’s a category signal, not a brand signal. That’s the difference between equity and convention. Find the element you own and protect it with explicit design rules before the next refresh simplifies it away.
Make the premium physical
The reasons to pay more, finish, substrate, structure, weight, texture, live in the hand, not on a monitor. A screen flatters everything equally; it renders premium packaging and budget packaging with identical fidelity. The shelf doesn’t. Those material decisions are invisible in a design review and decisive on a planogram.
Prove it in a production-matched comp before you commit
The lowest-cost place to find out your premium doesn’t read is a comp on a mock shelf next to the actual store brand. The most expensive place is the planogram, after the run is locked. The comp isn’t a deliverable at the end of the process. It’s the test in the middle of it.
The store brand next to you is now designed to be chosen, not settled for. The brands that hold their space are the ones that can show, in the hand, why they still cost more. That case can’t be made on a slide. It has to be built.
A slide makes the claim.A comp makes the case.
If the private label in your category just got a redesign, the fastest way to see how you actually compare is to hold both, in production-matched form, on the same shelf. 3D Color builds production-matched packaging comps, prototypes, and sales samples for CPG brands so your premium is provable before it ships.
The store brand is now designed to be chosen. The premium you charge for has to be legible in the hand, next to it, before you commit to production.
Reach Bob directly · bob.jennings@3dcolor.com
Prove the premium in the hand
Hold your pack against the actual store brand before you commit.
3D Color produces production-matched packaging comps, prototypes, and sales samples for CPG brands. When the store brand next to you just got a designer, we let your team see how the premium actually reads, in craft, color, finish, and shelf presence, in hand and on a mock shelf, before the investment is locked.
Bob Jennings, CEO of 3D Color
Bob Jennings is the CEO of 3D Color, where comps, prototypes, and sales samples are 100 percent of the business. If the private label in your category just got a redesign and you haven’t yet held both on the same shelf, he’s the person to reach.
Reach Bob directly