White Label Strategies Power Brand Development & Innovation

Starting a business is hard, and entering a competitive market makes it even harder. The process of white labeling – a product produced by one company and rebranded, marketed, and sold by another – has grown in popularity in recent decades. This process allows businesses to build a brand without having to manufacture their own products.

Entering the cannabis industry happened by accident for Jill Holly. Switching careers unexpectedly led her to working at a company that, unknowingly, supported cannabis, she fell in love with the booming market, helping grow Joy Organics into a successful large business before founding her own – Private Label Support. 

Holly has supplied thousands of brands with cannabis products over the years. With the help of her white labeled products, many of these brands have reached their own success. This process allows easier market entry, the ability to discover and dial in what works, and focus on building their business — expanding the possibilities for wellness brands and the cannabis industry altogether.

Holly sat with The Green Letter to share how it all works, as well as product trends and emerging innovations in the industry. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you first get into a cannabis career?

I was in the financial services business, and in 2012 or 2013, the clearing firm where I had my clients’ money got shut down because the owner had been embezzling money — including my clients’ money — to the tune of like $225 million. I had to find another job pretty quickly, and my degree is in agriculture and biology. I found a job at a fertilizer company, and during the interview all they mentioned was fertilizer, but on my first day I found out it was cannabis fertilizer. 

I’m not a huge smoker or partaker, but I needed a job, and I ended up enjoying it. It was about the time it was becoming legal in Colorado and in some other states, so it was a booming industry. I really enjoyed my time selling the fertilizer. I got to travel a lot and meet with hydroponic stores and growers. It was fun, and I learned a lot.

In 2018, I saw an ad for someone to help a gentleman starting a CBD company, and I was looking to make a little more money and get out of what I was doing. I met with him, got the job, and I helped launch Joy Organics. I was their first employee and helped with every aspect of their business as they grew. We grew to 100 employees, and I settled in as the vice president of B2B sales. That was fun; it was a great run. We really shrunk down after COVID, and in 2022 we decided to reorganize, and that’s when I became a subcontractor to Joy Organics as Private Label Support.

I’d say 90% of our work is supporting Joy Organics and their white label program, but we’ve started to branch out on some other products that we offer to white label customers like a functional mushroom that Joy doesn’t carry and THCV which is fantastic for concentration and appetite suppression. It’s called the “weederol.” We also make private label products for customers that reach out to us. 

The transition was nice because the Joy Organics customers had a place to go, and we had talked about cutting the program. White labeling is really hard to orchestrate. You have lots of layers — designers, blank bottles, printing, and so many certifications. By splitting off, since we don’t do any manufacturing at Private Label Support, we could skim out some certifications. Our manufacturers still have the certification, but it gave us a little more flexibility in the amount of paperwork we had to file since the products come to us full and sealed, and we just design labels, put them on, and send them out. 

Are you designing the labels for your clients?

They send us the design. We tried to have ‘business in a box’ and found it very difficult to be good at everything. Instead, we have a resource guide where we refer people to other businesses that offer those services. It’s a very handy tool. 

How long into the development of Joy Organics did you start offering B2B white labeling services?

In the first few months, we realized there was a market for it. We actually teetered on not doing it, and we kept getting calls for it, so we decided to go for it. We launched over 3,000 brands and have some loyal customers from the beginning to this day. It’s been a good journey, and I’m glad we kept it. 

Not all of those 3,000 are still in business, though. It’s a competitive market. We probably have between 600 and 1,000 active customers – meaning they buy at least once a year – so it’s still a fair amount, but if people aren’t prepared to advertise, they’re just not going to make it.

Are you working mostly with startups, or established companies moving into the white labeling space?

We have a fair amount of new businesses that reach out, but once they find out how complicated CBD is with the merchant processing, banking, and social media advertising, we lose a lot of people in that part of the conversation. The people that make it to the end have the wherewithal; they have marketing budgets, and the excitement and knowledge to move forward.

What does that process look like for those wanting to start selling CBD products?

People call and say they want to get in the CBD market. They may have a spa or want to get into ecommerce CBD because they hear it’s really hot. They’ll come with a website or be building one, and what we do is make sure they have the banking and merchant processing in place. We have our resource list to help them get their marketing in order, and then we have wholesale pricing. We have several different pricing tiers, and we find what program’s going to work for them, and we put together an order. They send us their paperwork and their logo, and our designer makes sample labels for them. We can match an existing label if they already have supplements and they want it to look similar to that, or we give them some ideas, and we go back and forth until they're happy. We build out the rest of the labels, and in seven to 10 business days we ship out their order.

What products are the most popular?

One of our best sellers is our Blackberry Lime 10mg THC/10mg CBD gummy. Right now, it’s in the loophole with the Farm Bill, so in a lot of states that don’t have dispensaries, people can buy these gummies and still get high, so that’s one of our best sellers. Our 25mg softgel and our 100mg softgel are also very big sellers — easy to take, very convenient, and very effective. They have water-soluble powder that’s nano-emulsified, so the bioavailability is really great in those. 

We sell a lot of our sports cream, which has menthol and camphor with 1,000 mg. Right behind that for topicals is a roll-on that has 900 mg, but the applicator is very popular because people don’t have to get their hands greasy to put something on their knee while they’re playing pickleball or on their wrist while they’re playing golf or whatever. It’s very convenient.

We do sell quite a few dog chews, and our certified organic stuff is popular too. We have certified organic gummies that are 25mg broad spectrum and we have a certified organic full-spectrum gummy. People going after the organic market can use those as well as our salve. 

Those are the kind of markets we see the most interest in, and we’ve seen a bit of decline in our tinctures. I think the method of administration is becoming less of a novelty, and people are noticing that gummies and softgels are a lot easier to take and keep track of.

What other product trends are you noticing?

The minor cannabinoids are starting to get more popular. People are trying to sell our CBG products, and we have CBN sleep products that are great. Our sleep gummies are really good sellers — probably right behind the Blackberry Lime in our gummy section. Those minor cannabinoids – a lot of people are showing interest in that.

What does day-to-day business look like in your warehouse?

All of our sales and account managers, our admin, and our graphic designers work from home. Everything is coordinated through our account manager, and she works with the graphic designer to get the labels done. Then, we outsource that to a local label company here in Fort Collins that is fantastic — nationally ranked, 100% the best labels you could ever have. Our warehouse staff picks those up several times a week, then once the labels get to the warehouse and we pull the product. After it’s been paid for, we label it up and ship it out. The only caveat is if someone wants to certify our products under their name, we have to wait until we hear back from our certifier that it’s approved to ship out.

Everything is prepackaged when it comes to our warehouse. We would need so many other licenses, we’d need a clean room, and a whole other layer of stuff if it wasn’t. I agree with the way Joy Organics has set things up — let the manufacturers and the copackers be really good at what they do, then focus on supplying this product to the companies with their brands already on it.

What is the most exciting thing you’re seeing in the cannabis market?

I see things that I think are more novelty happening, like beverages. They are very expensive to transport and to get licensing for because it’s a whole different food manufacturing license. I’ve seen that grow, but I don’t know that it’s going to last. Delta-9 is really popular too; we sell a ton of delta-9 products. 

The minor cannabinoids are super exciting as more research comes out on what these cannabinoids are capable of. CBG is really good for inflammation, but they’re also finding maybe it works for Parkinson’s or maybe it works for gastro problems. There’s studies out on THCV – it’s a very, very minor cannabinoid and more expensive because it’s found in such small amounts in the plant, but people are getting better cognitive function. They’re able to focus better, and it works for suppressing appetite. We’re also hearing more about CBN, which is a stay asleep cannabinoid. We mix it in our sleep gummy with melatonin, CBD, and a little bit of THC. You fall asleep with the THC and melatonin, but stay asleep with the CBN. There are lots of unique traits of the minor cannabinoids, and then there are a lot of terpenes out there that have benefits we weren’t aware of 10 years ago, so super exciting stuff.

You’re also doing some work with functional mushrooms. What’s happening with research and new products in that space?

We are launching our first product that’s a functional mushroom — it has ashwagandha and lion’s mane. We’ve put some L theanine and reishi into it, and it works very well. We call it Focus, those mushrooms have a lot of qualities that help you focus. I work with a colleague and several manufacturers on this capsule. The manufacturer is actually in the UK, but the ashwagandha is sourced from India. It’s the KSM-66, which is really high-level, high-potency, and very good quality ashwagandha. It’s nice because it doesn’t contain CBD, so brands can use it to advertise on social media to draw people to their website. People who have tested it say it’s fantastic, and we’re in the process of finishing that formula and hope to get that out in the next month or so.

Nootropics is also a very exciting industry, so I can see us moving more into that because our THCV sells very well. Once we see the market is there for that, then I can see us launching into other formulas that have functional mushrooms for sleep or other different things. I’m studying all the great things it can do, but stress, sleep, and focus seem to be the big ones.

How does the ability to white label products help businesses grow?

It allows people to focus on what they’re good at. Marketing, sales, networking, trade shows, farmers markets… all that stuff takes time. The nice thing about white labeling is that people get a tried-and-true product. We already know there’s a demand for it, and it’s quick to market. The minimums are less, so you’re not taking as much liability or risk when you buy 12 versus 300 bottles, so you can get started on a smaller level. A lot of our clients will start with 10 products and figure out what their leaders will be, then they’ll focus on the ones they’re selling the most of and expand from that. They can also get enough traction with their white label brand and add their own products if customers are asking for it. It feels less risky to be able to make the product because you already know what your clients want, so that’s a big part of white labeling.

The other thing is fulfillment services. If our client has an ecommerce site, we will store their product at our warehouse. We’ll hook up their website to our shipping platform, and we’ll ship their products every morning. It’s really turnkey; they never have to touch the product. All they have to do is focus on advertising, marketing, and selling, and it makes it a lot easier than having to worry about testing formulas, depending on how big your staff is. Of course there are companies that have people dedicated to that, but most of the entrepreneurs we work with are small- to medium-sized businesses, and they don’t have the resources to or allocation for someone to only be in charge of a product or formulation that may not sell. It’s great for people who are just dipping into this market — they want to find out what’s going to sell. We have all the labs and labels done, and we can ship it out for them. It’s a really easy way to get into the market.

How is white labeling helping elevate the cannabis industry as a whole?

It brings in another demographic to the market. I think there are people who want to wholesale, and people who want to create their own, but it’s kind of a headache. There’s this niche of people that want their own brand but not the headache, and this gives them that opportunity with a lower risk. It gives them an opportunity to see what’s going to sell and if they’re good at it. It’s a very competitive market, so they’ve got to make sure they’re ready for that.