Brandless’ pop-up shop wants to convince you to stop buying pricey, name-brand products

LOS ANGELES (CIRCA) - What's in a name? If you ask Brandless, the company behind the $3 everything e-commerce company, not much.

The company recently opened a physical pop-up shop in West Hollywood, California. There, people can go in and try some of its most popular products, like Lemon Verbena Hand Cream or Black Bean & Corn Salsa.

"Brandless sells over 300 better-for-you essentials from clean beauty to non-GMO foods," said Lee Anne Grant, head of business development and partnerships for the brand.

The e-commerce company, which launched last year, is touting "brand tax"-free products at its pop-up, which is open until May 13, and on its flagship online store.

“We believe that better doesn’t need to cost more," said Grant. "By cutting out the middlemen, we’re able to charge people a lot less."

Grant uses an 8-ounce bottle of Brandless' Green Tea & Aloe Shampoo as an example. On Brandless, it's $3. A similar formula at a major retailer that had to be shipped there and has fancy packaging could cost 370 percent more.

Brandless is betting big on e-commerce shoppers who value quality, don't want to pay an arm and a leg, and are willing to wait a few days to receive the products in the mail. And so are a lot of retailers.

“The growth of private-label products in the marketplace has been extraordinary, particularly over the last 12 to 18 months."

That's according to Patrick Moorhead, the chief marketing officer at Label Insight, a tech company that generates product labels for half a million U.S. products. He says companies like CVS and Target have private-label brands to increase transparency with customers.

"In many cases, they’re taking advantage of packaging the products and making the products towards answering those consumer questions at the product level, where I think legacy national brand products are having to re-engineer products to meet those demands," said Moorhead.

Brandless wouldn't say how many customers it has, but says it's growing and shipping to every U.S. state every day.

“You’ll see new products every week in all of our current categories. There’s a lot of products we can sell for $3.”