White Label and Private Label in China: Steps and Contracts

In white label, you take an existing product from the factory's catalogue, unmodified or with minor changes, colour, packaging, marking, and put your brand on it. In private label, you start from a specification that belongs to you, with specifications specific to your brand, even though the factory handles manufacturing.

White label is faster and cheaper to launch, since the product already exists and its mould or tooling is already amortised. Private label takes more time and a heavier upfront investment, often tooling development, but builds a product that genuinely belongs to you, harder for a competitor ordering from the same factory to reproduce identically.

Between the two, an intermediate path exists: taking an existing product and modifying one key part, a mechanism, a material, a format, without starting from a blank page. This option limits the tooling investment while still giving real differentiation, provided the chosen modification is protected by contract in the same way as a full development.

A factory that already works in white label for several brands is not a problem in itself: it is its business model. The point to check is its ability to honour exclusivity on what genuinely sets you apart, packaging, marking, tech pack modifications, without reusing these elements for another client.

Ask for production references on volumes comparable to yours, visit the workshop if volume justifies it, and check financial soundness and team stability before committing to a tooling development that will tie you to this factory for several years of production.

A serious factory agrees to discuss these points before the order. A factory that systematically dodges questions about its other clients or about tooling ownership deserves closer scrutiny before any financial commitment on a mould.

A mould developed for your product, a proprietary design, a specific formula or assembly must be protected before the factory starts producing. The purchase contract must specify who owns the mould, where it is stored, and the conditions under which the factory may or may not use it for another client.

Without a written clause, a mould is often still treated as the de facto property of the factory that paid for or partly financed it, even if you bore the cost. Have a confidentiality agreement signed before sending your plans, and have mould ownership and design exclusivity written into the contract, not just exchanged by email.

In private label, the specification replaces the factory's existing product sheet: it must describe materials, dimensions, tolerances, required tests and packaging, with enough precision that another factory could, in theory, produce the same item. It is this document, more than the relationship with a given contact, that protects the continuity of your brand.

Have a reference sample approved based on this specification, before the pre-production run and before every reorder. This sample becomes the reference against which each subsequent batch is compared, even if you change factories later.

Keep this specification in your own file, with its successive dated versions. A document that only circulates in the factory's messaging is easily lost between contacts, whereas a version centralised on your side remains the stable reference for your brand.

A purchase contract with a Chinese factory for an own brand must cover, at minimum, ownership of the mould and tooling, confidentiality over the design and specification, a limited non-compete clause on the elements that set you apart, and the conditions for ending the relationship, return or destruction of the mould, fate of component stock.

Add the expected quality standards, the AQL levels used, penalties for delay or non-compliance, and the governing law in case of dispute. A contract written after the first problem always arrives too late: these clauses are negotiated before the first order, not after.

Sorva is a brokerage and sourcing house. Our Chinese-speaking team in Guangzhou identifies factories competent for your product category, helps frame the specification and the reference sample, and has the mould ownership and confidentiality clauses negotiated before any tooling development.

In most cases, you pay no fees: you open a file with us, we negotiate the goods for you, and we take a commission on their ex-factory value.