PLBuyer editors believe these 10 people will face major challenges and/or have major impacts in the private label world during the coming year.

Where will the private label action be in 2012? What factors will impact how much private label you sell and to whom? PLBuyer consulted with industry experts and looked in its editors’ collective crystal ball to put together the following predictions and trends you need to know if you want to grow your private label sales and profits in 2012.

Marketing like national brands came into vogue, as did more premium and more new product rollouts.

Retailers show an inconsistent strategy in marketing their private label beverage aisle offerings, report PLBuyer’s secret shoppers. Of the six stores chosen throughout the country for our secret shopper visits, no one element of in-store marketing was present in all the stores.

It’s a common conundrum: food retailers want to maximize private label sales but driving awareness requires marketing time and money.

PLBuyer’s editorial board expects to see more innovation, more niche lines and more marketing for private label in the coming year.

Sales of paper products - a staple in the majority of U.S. households that includes everything from paper towels, to facial tissue, to toilet paper - proved to be nearly recession-proof from 2008 to 2010.

The band America had it right with its song A Horse With No Name that, in singing about the desert, says: “there were plants and birds and rocks and things, there was sand and hills and rings.”