About

Built by Someone Who Actually Did the Job

No gurus, no affiliate marketers. Ten years of product management at a European e-commerce company, currently leading its private label team — including the failures.

Karin Olsokova

Product Manager & Private Label Specialist · Czech Republic

Ten years in product at a Central European e-commerce company: Lead Product Manager since 2018, and since 2023 leading the company's private label team — strategy, sourcing, ODM projects, compliance and the people who do it.

The job is exactly what this site describes: take an idea, find the factory, negotiate the deal, test the samples, pass the certifications, build the brand, launch the product, and manage what happens afterwards.

I am not writing this from research. I am writing it from the version of the job where the money was real and the mistakes were mine.

karin@privatelabelzero.com LinkedIn →

Verifiable

Check me out before you trust me

Designer of record on five registered Community designs, all currently valid and all on the public register of the EU Intellectual Property Office. Look them up yourself — each number links straight to its entry:

015086146-0001 · 015086249-0001 · 015086262-0001 · 015086280-0001 · 015086354-0001

Most people writing about private label cannot point you at a public register. I can.

📈

+20ppMargin increaseReplaced resold products with our own private label line, adding 20 percentage points of margin to the business.

🏭

Full lifecycle, dozens of products: sourcing, factory negotiation, sampling, user research panels, health and safety certification, packaging, launch.

🇪🇺

EU compliance in a strictly regulated category — silicone material certification, product safety, labelling. If I could certify intimate wellness products, you can certify yours.

The method, in one story

How we turned a mediocre bestseller into a category-defining product

Most of what's on this site comes out of one real product journey:

Found the opportunity in our own sales dataA bestselling product with weak functionality and poor user experience. Customers bought it — and complained about it. That gap is gold.

Validated demand before committingSales data proved the minimum order quantity was achievable before we spent a single euro on development. No guessing.

Fixed everything customers complained aboutSystematic review mining and user research — not opinions, not "I think people would like…"

Repositioned from red ocean to blue oceanInstead of competing on price with fifty identical products, we created a product with no direct competition.

Career

Where this experience comes from

2023 – present · Lead Product Manager, private label teamLeading the team and the private label strategy: brand strategy for the private label range, working with strategic purchasing, finding new factories, supplier communication and negotiating terms, ODM projects, quality control, and signing off private label projects. Plus the leadership side — process design, reporting, working with HR, developing the team.

2018 – 2023 · Lead Product ManagerProduct strategy and the full private label lifecycle: market research, finding suitable products and factories, the testing process (quality and user feedback), OEM and ODM projects, calculations of cost, margin and profit, packaging — design, on-pack content and instructions — certificates, freight and the customs process, content marketing, stock monitoring and purchasing, forecasting, complaints and quality control.

The parts of the job I actually did

Sourcing & factory negotiation

Finding suppliers and new factories, separating manufacturers from trading agents, first contact, quotes, MOQ negotiation, payment terms and contracts.

OEM & ODM projects

Running development projects at every level — from putting a brand on an existing product to specifying tooling, function and materials, and deciding which of those a given product actually justified.

Samples & quality

Sample rounds, golden samples, user testing panels, and the discipline of not approving a sample because you want it to be good. Then quality control and complaints once it is on the shelf.

Compliance, freight & customs

CE marking, REACH, GPSR, technical files, material safety testing, certificates, voluntary certification as a trust asset, arranging freight and getting shipments through the customs process — and being the named person who answered for all of it.

Numbers

Landed cost, margin and profit calculations, stock monitoring and purchasing, forecasting — the arithmetic that decides whether a product idea is a business or a hobby.

Brand, packaging & launch

Private label brand strategy, positioning, naming and trademark screening, packaging design, on-pack content and instructions, print specs, listings, content marketing and the launch itself.

Leading the team

Building and running the private label team: process design, reporting, working with HR, developing people, and approving what shipped under the brand.

Five principles behind everything here

Evidence before opinion

Every decision is backed by something real — sales data, competitor review mining, customer complaints. Never "I think people would like…"

Process over hacks

There are no shortcuts to a real product business. You get the order of operations and the reasoning — the thing I wish someone had handed me.

Failures included

I write from products that failed as much as from products that worked. The failure stories are where the best lessons live.

EU-first compliance

Compliance is woven into every stage rather than bolted on at the end — because one customs seizure costs more than the whole exercise.

Own it, don't resell it

This is for people who want to build something that cannot be switched off overnight by a supplier or a platform.

Get in touch

Questions about your product idea, a factory you're talking to, or whether private label is even the right path — just ask. I read every email personally, and there's no sales pitch waiting.

karin@privatelabelzero.com

Also on LinkedIn · Or start with the free guide.