Amazon.com’s private label products have been getting some attention recently. Now the online retailer is preparing to go international with its private label strategy, launching one of its largest brands — Pinzon — in the U.K. in August. Amazon has been steadily growing Pinzon and its other private labels — Strathwood, Denali and Pike Street — over the last several years. In doing so, Amazon is following the path of brick-and-mortar retailers like Wal-mart and Target, which are pushing their own brands as a cheaper option for shoppers squeezed by the recession.

Here’s a rundown of Amazon’s private label brands:

Strathwood (launched April 2004): outdoor furniture and decor.

Pinzon (launched August 2005): bed and bath, kitchen and dining, indoor furniture.

Pike Street (launched August 2005): low-cost bed and bath.

Denali (launched Nov. 2006): power tools and accessories.

Amazon next week is also launching "Tom Douglas by Pinzon," with a selection of kitchen gadgets from the Seattle celebrity chef.

Is Amazon planning more private labels? "There’s definitely talk that this is a great avenue to pursue because it offers a great value proposition," said an Amazon spokeswoman. "It’s something we are looking into but there’s nothing to announce at this time."

Amazon recently applied for a series of trademarks for Amazon Basics covering a range of goods. Could this be the beginnings of a new private label online store? The company isn’t talking about it yet.

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and Mozilla: Microsoft’s ‘facts’ on IE, Firefox good for a few laughs  

Mozilla director Mike Beltzner and infrastructure engineer Vladimir Vukicevic stopped by our offices today to demonstrate the upcoming Firefox 3.5 — including performance improvements, advanced audio and video support, and some slick tabbed browsing enhancements, among other features A new release candidate was issued today, and they’re aiming to ship the final version by the end of the month.

In the process of getting the rundown, I asked for their take on Microsoft’s new "Get the Facts" campaign in which the Redmond company declares itself the winner against Firefox and Chrome in seven out of 10 categories — security, privacy, ease of use, developer tools, reliability, compatibility and manageability.

"That got passed around the office — a little bit more as humor thing," Vukicevic said.

"It’s marketing, I guess," Beltzner added.

Rather than address the Microsoft claims point-by-point, Beltzner said it’s interesting that Microsoft is now talking about the browser market in competitive terms — acknowledging and publicly comparing itself to the competition in a way it didn’t in the past.

"They seem nervous," Beltzner said. "They’re spending a lot of time talking about why people want to choose a browser, which is good for us, because I think if you’re at the point where you’re choosing a browser, it’s going to work out in our favor." 

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and Video: iPhone 3G S launch  

Here’s a video montage from today’s iPhone 3G S launch in Seattle.

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LiquidPlanner raises cash  

LiquidPlanner has reeled in $1 million in angel financing, cash that the Bellevue online project management and collaboration service hopes will drive it to profitability.

The deal marks the first investment for the Alliance of Angel’s "side car fund," a new $4.3 million iniatitive supported by Madrona Venture Group and Trilogy Partners that’s designed to provide matching funds to promising startups.

"We raised more than we expected to raise," said Chief Executive Charles Seybold, a former Expedia employee who launched LiquidPlanner about one year ago. Since then, the company has operated without much outside capital and has tried to keep things "lean," he said.

Seybold said they only formally started raising the capital about 45 days ago. "It was a bit of a nail biter to wait for first quarter results to come out to do our fundraising," said Seybold.

But he added that the business is doing well — growing at about 10 percent month over month. LiquidPlanner’s online service is used by about 200 organizations — including Sandlot Games, X Space and Oracle — to help them better plan and schedule internal projects.

With the economy still struggling, Seybold said that LiquidPlanner has been able to gain traction in part because "it became kind of cool to plan again."

Companies, he said, are looking to cut costs and more efficiently managing projects is one way to do it, he said.

Of course, there’s no shortage of competition in the online project management arena. We’ve written recently about Seattle area companies such as Guppers, Kamune, Daptiv and Smartsheet, but other players include Basecamp and @ Task.

Seybold admitted that there’s "a lot of noise" in the space. But he said that many competitors are Basecamp knock offs and don’t offer the more heavy-duty planning capabilities such as task scheduling and time monitoring found in LiquidPlanner.

"We are sticking to our knitting and focusing on delivering great software," he said.

The company employs 10 people and plans to start "cautiously hiring" in the coming weeks.

"We are pretty conservative," said Seybold. "(Co-founder) Jason (Carlson) and I are both from the Midwest and we want to largely grow the company on its profits."

As part of the new investment, angel investor Geoff Entress has joined the company’s board. The Bellingham angel group also participated.

The new capital should be more than enough to get the company to profitability, Seybold said.

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