Many retailers across the board are shifting focus to own-brand product in a bid to generate loyalty as they battle to draw shoppers through the doors.

From Ocado to Debenhams, the advantage and security of powerful own-brands is an increasingly key component in today’s volatile retail market.

One of the most successful retailers with powerful own-brand products is health and beauty giant Alliance Boots, which has manufactured makeup across its No7 and its younger, less expensive range 17, as well as other health and beauty lines through brands such as Soltan and Botanics.

No7 in particular has achieved such status that is strong enough for Boots to push the product across the globe, as highlighted in its year-end results today.

Boots said: “Our own brand products enable us to differentiate our retail offering from that of our competitors and are very important drivers of revenue and margin.”

Boots products are a staple of most women’s dressing tables and the famous No7 brand carries huge weight in its own right, not relying on the Boots name for its performance.

That was obvious when in 2007 Boots launched a beauty cream within its anti-ageing range Protect and Perfect to a frenzy of excitement because it was the first beauty product proven to reduce wrinkles. Thousands of women lined the aisles of Boots stores clutching handfuls of the miracle product, which the retailer sold out of.

Such innovations also give Boots, which has its own laboratories at its Nottingham headquarters, scientific credit in a saturated market where many brands claim to offer the elixir of youth but have no proof.  

The evidence of Boots’ success is clear in the US, where the No7 brand in the US is sold through a partnership with giant retailer Target.

Boots reported today: “Results outside the UK were particularly notable, achieved through new store opening and expanding product sales in key markets such as the US.”

Indeed, international revenue at the group’s health and beauty division increased 6.7% to £412m, like-for-likes advanced 1.3%.

Boots continues to be a product innovator, launching a No7 Beautiful Skin range in January, which included the trendy BB Cream.

Since the financial year end a new range of anti-ageing creams for the over 45’s called Lift & Luminate, which is proven to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and make skin feel firmer.

Boots plans to grow the brand internationally – a big opportunity at a time when many retailers are wrinkling their brows as they struggle to keep their heads above water as the UK economy continues to bump along.