Method
How the register is put together, how sure each entry is, and how to tell us when something is wrong.
How confidence is graded
Every entry carries one of four grades for how well its owner is established.
- Verified
- Owner backed by a register page, filing or official source we opened. 386 in the register.
- Reported
- Owner from a secondary source, or a register entry whose current status wasn’t checked. 178 in the register.
- Inferred
- Owner inferred from indirect evidence.
- Unverifiable
- No owner found in any source we opened. 10 in the register.
Unverifiable is a finding, not a gap. It means we looked and no source we opened names an owner, and the page says so: “We could not establish who owns this name.” Names still being researched aren’t in the register at all until the research is done.
Kinds of name
- Mainline brand
- This is the brand’s own full-price collection.
- Sold through the brand’s own stores and wholesale. Off-price stock is usually genuine surplus or end-of-line.
- Diffusion line
- A cheaper sub-brand sold at full price in its own right.
- Shares a parent with a pricier name but is made to a lower spec and price from the start.
- Runs an outlet line
- This brand makes a separate, cheaper line for outlets and off-price.
- Product under this name may be mainline surplus or made-for-outlet. The label tells say how to spot which.
- Licensed name
- The name is licensed to other makers for some or all of what carries it.
- The company that owns the trademark doesn’t necessarily make the product. Quality follows the licensee, not the name.
- Revived name
- A brand that closed or was sold, now owned by a brand-management company.
- The name is applied to product sourced by licensees. Its history says little about what’s on the rail today.
- Trade brand
- A real company with no consumer marketing in the UK.
- Sells through independents and off-price retailers. Unknown doesn’t mean bad; judge the garment.
- Registered to the retailer
- This trademark is registered to the retailer.
- The retailer controls the name and sources the product. Any RRP shown with it has no outside reference point.
- Name collision
- More than one company trades under this name.
- Check which one you’re holding before you lean on the reputation.
- Not established
- We could not establish what kind of brand this is.
- Nothing in public registers or press. Treat the name as carrying no information.
Where the facts come from
Each entry is built from pages a researcher opened: company and trademark registers, annual reports and other filings, brand and retailer websites, trade and national press, and reference sites such as Wikipedia. Every brand page lists those pages, numbered, and shows the date the entry was last checked. Where two research passes reached different answers, the second one is shown in smaller text under the notes.
The register cites 548 sources from 159 websites.
What Labelcase is not
- Not a rating. It doesn’t grade quality, ethics or authenticity. A kind of name says how a name is owned and used, not how well anything carrying it is made.
- Not a price checker. It doesn’t say whether a price or an RRP is fair.
- Not complete. A brand that isn’t here may simply not have been researched yet.
Independence
Labelcase is independent. It isn’t run by, paid by or affiliated with any retailer or brand it lists.
Corrections
If an entry is wrong or out of date, email hello@labelcase.co.uk with the brand name and, if you can, a link to a source. Corrections are checked against a source before an entry changes, and the entry’s checked date moves when it does.
To suggest a brand that isn’t in the register, send the name exactly as it appears on the label.