White labels are used by some websites to facilitate a successful brand for offering its services

The name has originated from the white labels image on the packaging where the trade dress of the marketer finds place. The origin of white label products can be traced back to the period when DJs removed the label from vinyl records so that other DJs could not recognize the track. The removal of labels from DJ records popularizes the term white label record.

Generic electronic products produced in bulk, like TVs and DVD players, generally use white label production. Some companies sell their products under a sub-brand name that is used exclusively by them. For instance Brand-A may sell the same model-A of DVD while Brand-B may sell it as a model-B.

Some websites provides white-labels to successful brands to enable them concentrate on services rather than investing in the creation of technology and infrastructure establishment. To list a few examples, Amazon.co.uk ran Waterstones website until recently, while LoveFilm runs Tescos DVD Rental services. A majority of store brand or supermarket private brand products are offered by companies which change only the labels of the products and then sell them to various supermarkets. Besides, a few manufacturers produce generic brand labels at low-cost, with just the products name, like Cola.

Credit-card operations are occasionally outsourced by smaller banks to larger banks. The bigger bank charges fee from the smaller one to issue and process the credit cards as white label cards. This, in turn, enables smaller banks to brand credit-cards as their own without any need to make any considerable infrastructure investment, which would otherwise lead to excessive overhead.