Over the past decade, UK grocery retailers have turned their own labels into serious competitors. Their success offers lessons in brand recognition, packaging design, and the intelligent use of creative and professional designers.
Why Own-Brands Are Winning
First, the macro forces are working in their favour. In 2023, own-label sales in UK supermarkets grew twice as fast as branded goods, as shoppers tightened belts and looked for value according to Yahoo News. Retailers responded by repositioning private label not just as cheap alternatives, but as premium, differentiated brands claims Wikipedia. This shift from generic “no-name” ranges to premium sub-brands has changed the game.
But how do these store brands elevate themselves from commodity to something memorable? The answer lies in design, storytelling, and bold packaging choices.
How They Do It: Design & Packaging as Strategy
- Investing in Graphic and Professional Designers
Grocery retailers increasingly hire creative agencies like us at Cowan. Graphic designers and professional designers bring the technical skill, creative process and brand thinking that allows own-brand lines to rival A-brands visually. AT Cowan, we have worked with grocery retailers such as Tesco for almost a decade. Whilst retailers often have in-house design teams, they often focus the internal team on range extensions rather than devising new brands. This is because a brand identity expert such as Cowan has decades of experience designing packaging systems, many of which have been researched and arrive at design projects with extensive knowledge of what drives consumer preference.
- Elevating the Unboxing / Shelf Experience
Great packaging isn’t just a wrapper—it creates memorable moments. The unboxing experience, the tactile feel, the reveal of secondary packaging elements—all of these become part of the brand’s identity. Grocers know that when customers feel impressed by the packaging of “their” brand, it boosts brand loyalty and recognition. The modern shopper is not just looking for an easy opening mechanism, but also a suitable closure device for products where part-consumption is likely – think about a chilled dessert pie or packet of biscuits. We also have extensive experience right-sizing packaging specs which is about the packaging material feeling appropriately premium or everyday without neglecting sustainability goals.
- Using Variation and Theme without Diluting Identity
UK Retailers are known for rolling out ranges across themes—”Essentials”, “Finest”, “Signature”—each with tailored variation in colour palettes, visual elements or typographic treatments. This gives coherence so that the product line feels unified, but still allows shelf standout. Over time these systems have built consumer trust in the credentials of the product being commensurate with the tier of the range. Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference is known to rival, if not exceed, the quality of premium branded competitors and consumers are prepared to pay for the quality.
- Rigour in Packaging Design Process
From packaging mockup to final design, retailers adhere to a structured creative process: market research, design development, shelf tests, optimisation of ancillary design elements, dieline template development, review of regulatory requirements and trials of different options. This ensures the product’s packaging both meets functional needs and delivers emotional impact. This process is built around our own trademark design approach detailed below.
- Storytelling through “Additional Information”
Packages often include just enough additional information—product benefits, provenance, usage cues—without overwhelming the design. That balance between visual style and necessary information is key to achieving clarity and trust.
The Cowan Design Process
At Cowan, design is not a linear sequence of steps but a strategic journey that blends creativity with commercial impact. Our process is deliberately human-centred and shopper insight-driven, ensuring every creative decision connects brands to the people who buy them, while building enduring preference in competitive markets.
We begin with clarity of purpose. Before pen meets paper, we interrogate the brand’s role in people’s lives and its cultural, category, and competitive context. This foundation is sharpened by shopper insights, behavioural understanding, and retail realities—because we believe design must be both beautiful and effective.
From there, we move into strategic exploration. This is where our “Designing Preference” philosophy comes alive: framing the opportunities where design can shift perception, simplify choice, and inspire loyalty. Our strategists and designers work shoulder to shoulder, identifying what truly differentiates the brand, and translating that into distinctive visual assets and meaningful brand worlds.
The creative development phase is both expansive and disciplined. We push ideas wide—playing with form, colour, typography, illustration, and structure—before curating, refining, and building systems that work across packaging, retail, and digital touchpoints. This ensures consistency without losing flexibility, allowing a brand to look both cohesive and alive wherever it meets its audience.
Finally, we focus on executional excellence. Design intent is nothing without rigorous craft. Every symbol & colour, every material choice, every pixel is engineered to perform—on shelf, in hand, and in market. Our teams manage detail meticulously while staying anchored to the bigger brand story, ensuring that what launches is not just visually striking but commercially sound.
Throughout, our process is marked by collaboration and intuition. We involve clients at every stage—aligning, challenging, and co-creating—because the best outcomes are born from partnership. And we never lose sight of instinct: that gut sense of what feels right for people, culture, and category.
In short, Cowan’s design process is a balance of insight and imagination, structure and spontaneity, detail and daring. It’s how we’ve helped brands across the globe not only stand out but also stay loved, proving that brand choice is inspired, not accidental.
The Rise of Grocery-Owned Brands with Their Own Identities
One of the most fascinating developments in the UK retail landscape is how grocery chains have created own brands with distinct identities, rather than dragging a single “house label” aesthetic across everything. Rather than simply being “Tesco’s budget line,” these sub-brands aim to feel like real, standalone brands which is far more effective as improving shopper perception, shelf presence, and consumer loyalty.
We’ve been privileged to contribute to this shift. At Cowan, we’ve worked on building strong identity and packaging systems for Ms Molly’s, T. E. Stockwell, Hearty Food Co., as well as extensive general merchandise lines under Tesco Home and Tesco Home Office. In these projects we had to thread a delicate needle: presenting something that feels premium and confident, but still looks like good value, especially in a cost-of-living environment where shoppers seek quality at accessible prices.
For example:
- In reimagining Ms Molly’s (Tesco’s treat brand) we ensured that while it looked premium and ownable, the packaging still communicated affordability and shelf clarity. YouK+1
- Reviving T. E. Stockwell, a heritage name in Tesco’s archive, we delved into the brand’s story and used it as a foundation for graphic identity, designing over 300 SKUs of cupboard essentials as part of a broader strategy. Cowan
- For Hearty Food Co., Cowan helped create a flexible, multi-tier chilled meals range with clear family appeal and distinctive shelf packaging. Cowan
- On the general merchandise side, for Tesco Home and Tesco Home Office, we’ve extended identity systems, packaging style and visual elements across product boxes, mailer boxes, ancillary design elements, and consistency in dieline template strategy.
Because we’ve designed in the world of packaging design for these brands, we bring deep experience in matching brand’s identity with shelf impact. We know how critical the final design moment is—and how small design decisions (typography, bold colours, structure) contribute to good design that performs. For almost a decade, we’ve also designed for Tesco’s own-label sections in beauty, applying the same logic of building visual recognition while respecting price expectations.
One key insight is that looking like “good value” is often as important as looking premium. Packages that appear overly luxurious may set expectations too high; those that feel too budget may suppress perceived quality. The art is to hit a sweet spot of value perception, usability, and brand identity. That’s why in each project we lean into variation in packaging style, maintain consistency in theme, and test different options so the packaging of the world balances aspiration and accessibility.
Designing for Tesco: More Than a Client, a Longstanding Partnership
Our collaboration with Tesco has provided us with the opportunity to design brand identity and packaging design with them across food, grocery, general merchandise, and beauty own-label. That breadth gives us a unique vantage on how brands and own label lines can coexist and even reinforce each other.
Across own-label beauty, for instance, we’ve designed sub-brands and packaging systems that draw from global category trends while fitting seamlessly into Tesco’s shelf architecture. We’ve navigated regulatory requirements, shelf constraints, dieline limitations, and packaging mockups to ensure each SKU meets both marketing aspirations and logistical realities.
In our work, we maintain a creative process that emphasizes consumer insight, shelf tests, stakeholder buy-in, iteration, and analytics to guide the design decision. All the while, we preserve consistency in brand recognition and visual elements that carry across lines. This approach ensures that it’s not just “a Tesco own brand,” but “your own brand in Tesco.”
Coexistence: When Branded & Own-Label Brands Share the Shelf
A question often arises: can national brands and grocery-owned brands truly cohabit the same shelf space without cannibalising each other? The short answer is yes — and increasingly evidence suggests they can reinforce each other if executed smartly.
A recent UK analysis reported in the Financial Times discussed how own label lines, when positioned with clarity and identity, reduce shopper risk by offering alternatives without sacrificing category loyalty. (For example, Tesco’s move to broaden its Finest premium own label illustrates that shoppers will trade up within the same grocer rather than defect entirely to national brands.)
The coexistence model works when:
- Branded lines maintain differentiation (e.g. unique claims, innovation)
- Own brands articulate their value proposition clearly (through clean, prioritised design elements, quality cues, messaging)
- Packaging systems are respectful of shelf dynamics so both kinds of names get presence
- The brand architecture is intentional (tiers, sub-brands, venture brands)
In that way, shoppers feel choice, trust, and flexibility that keeps them returning to the retailer.
