Store brands like Kirkland are winning the war -3-

Attempts to reach Fresh Express were unsuccessful. Albertsons (ACI) and ConAgra (CAG) did not respond to requests for comment. Walmart declined to comment.

Pejman Javaheri, managing partner at Juris Law Group, noted that consumer packaged-goods manufacturers have to indemnify the retailer against any product issues arise with the private-label goods. It's also usually the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure everything on those products' labeling is accurate.

Questions can sometimes emerge over who owns the formula for a product if a relationship between a retailer and a factory ends, said Mark Duedall, a partner at the law firm Baker Donelson. And, even though both sides try to put up legal boundaries to protect their intellectual property, consumer-goods companies with private-label partnerships can end up tipping their hand to retailers.

Kusum Ailawadi, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College who has done research on private-label brands, said retailers can glean information about manufacturers' costs based on how they price products. More information like that can mean more negotiating leverage for retailers.

Retailers can also play games with which products get stocked in stores. Some of Ailawadi's research on retailers in Spain has found that if a big company that makes and sells products countrywide supplies a retailer's store-brand products, the retailer will stock more of a manufacturer's name-brand items by a small yet still meaningful degree. When that relationship ends, however, the reverse happens, to a similar magnitude.

"The lesson, for me, is [to] think carefully before you step in, because, if you find that you don't want to do this, getting out might actually hurt you," she said.

For many brands, these dilemmas are likely to loom ever larger as consumers continue gravitating to private-label products.

-Bill Peters

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

09-16-26 0830ET