Behind the Label

Most people only meet a brand once it looks finished.

They see the website, the product photos, and the posts on social media; What they don't see is everything that came before. The months spent figuring things out, the ideas that didn't work, the decisions that could have gone either way, the small wins and the big wins that kept them going. 

At Labeld, one of the things we do is build websites for brands. We handle the part most brand founders would rather not spend their time on: getting the site online, making it look right, and making sure it actually works; but after working with so many brands, we started noticing something.

We knew their products. We knew what they sold and how they wanted to present themselves. But we often knew very little about the people behind them.

A website can only tell you so much. It can show you the product, the price, the contact details and the checkout page. It doesn't tell you why the business exists, what it took to get there, or what happened when things didn't go according to plan. That's the part we wanted to know, so we created Behind the Label.

The Series

Behind the Label is our interview series with the brands on our platform.

We sit down with founders around the moments that matter to them: a launch, a new collection, a store opening, an anniversary, or even the week a shipment they've been waiting months for finally arrives. We ask where the idea came from and what the founder was doing before it. We ask about the first version that didn't work, the supplier who disappeared, the money that ran out, the decision that nearly ended the business, and the reason they decided to keep going.

These aren't meant to be promotional interviews. They're conversations about what building a business actually looks like when you're the person responsible for making it work.

Why We Do It

Every brand has something its competitors can't copy: the story of how it came to be.

A product can be replicated, a design can be copied, but nobody else has the same reason for starting the business, the same setbacks, or the same journey that brought it to where it is today. Most founders don't really get a place to tell that story. Behind the Label gives founders a little more room. Room to talk about the business beyond what it sells, and to tell the story in their own words.

Why It Matters

The market our brands operate in is crowded. Everyone is trying to get noticed. A founder working in small batches, reinvesting profits, and putting everything they have into the business is competing for attention with companies that can spend more on one campaign than they have made all year.

We can't fix that imbalance.

But we can make sure the brands we work with aren't reduced to a logo and a product photo, because when people know the story behind something, they look at it differently. They see the hours that went into it, the mistakes that had to be fixed  and the reason the product exists in the first place, and that can change the relationship between a customer and a brand. People don't just want to know what they're buying anymore; Increasingly, they want to know who they're buying from and why it matters.

Also, the people watching these conversations are often building something themselves, or thinking about starting. And while polished success stories can be inspiring, they don't always tell you much about what it actually feels like to build a business. The difficult version is often more useful. These are the stories that can make someone else feel a little less alone in their own journey.

Labeld has always believed that we're doing more than helping businesses get online. A website is one part of a brand. The people, decisions and stories behind it are another. Behind the Label is our way of giving those stories the attention they deserve. 

We have always said we're more than a website builder. Behind the Label is how we prove it, because every brand has a story.