Independent. Family-led. Since 1991.
One of the last independent label printers in an industry rolled up by private equity. We answer the phone. We say yes. We figure it out.
Rudy didn't set out to be a label printer.
Rudy Gaytan grew up in his family's business — Gaytan Foods, founded 1935 in the City of Industry, California.
He saw the problem firsthand for years: label vendors missed deadlines, missed specs, and never came with a person who'd answer the phone. So in 1991, he built the shop he wished his family had been buying from.
Rudy died in 2016 — a hard loss, and a clear next chapter. His son Ryan took the helm and has led the company ever since. Same family. Same shop. Same promise.
Most of the industry has been rolled up by private equity since. We haven't. The presses are faster. The technology is better. The team is bigger. But when an SMB brand calls and says “I need this Monday,” someone here picks up the phone, says yes, and figures out how.
A decision-maker picks up the phone.
Independent label printers used to be the default. Then came consolidation. Heritage shops dating back over a century. Regional players in every state. Most of them have been rolled up — and most of the names that used to mean something now answer to a private-equity board. Five major PE groups now own roughly half the U.S. market. That changes how things work — quotes go through committees, problems go through tickets, and the person on the other end of the phone usually can't say yes.
We chose differently. Not because we're nostalgic, but because independence is operationally better for the customers we serve. When something goes wrong on your job, you don't get routed to a call center. You reach someone who can decide — and by the time we hang up, the floor knows what's happening.
That's not a cultural value. It's a structural advantage.
We invested in third-party auditing because the alternative is asking you to trust us.
Every job clears our SGS-audited GMP program before shipping. 93%+ of defects caught internally. That isn't typical in our industry — and it's why our 96%+ OTIF performance is provable, not promised. Our GMP program supports regulated categories — supplements, beauty, OTC — and is equipped for pharmaceutical work when the right customer fit lands.
See how the system works →// The team
The people who pick up the phone.
Independent means a real person owns your job from quote to ship. Here's who you'll be working with.
Ryan Gaytan is CEO of The Label Shoppe, where he sets the vision and leads the technology and systems work that lets a family-led printer move faster than the private equity rollups around it. His instinct is to simplify the complex, turning a tangled order into a quote in hours, not days. Outside work, he's a weightlifter, a relentless audiobook listener, husband, and dad to two.
One call. Consider it done.
Quotes in 4 hours or less. Decision-makers in minutes. Independent since 1991.