The Unexpected Brand Rumored To Be Behind Walmart's Great Value Cleaning Products

Walmart's Great Value brand has provided shoppers with generic alternatives to name-brand products since 1993. The Great Value lineup includes hundreds of different products — from go-to grocery items like cheese, bread, and condiments to household staples like cleaning supplies — all offered at prices considered more affordable than competitors' name brands. Going generic makes stocking up on household essentials cheaper and, sometimes, there isn't an obvious difference in quality. In fact, Great Value items can perform just as well as products from premium brands. If you've ever wondered who's responsible for making Great Value cleaning products, we've discovered one of the unexpected brands behind them: Kik Consumer Products.

Figuring out which brands manufacture products under the Great Value line is tricky because Walmart doesn't readily offer that information to the public. However, according to information released on Walmart's website after the 2009 revamp of the Great Value product line, the retailer works with several hundred suppliers to create these products. It takes some digging to find out who, exactly, is behind Great Value — and whether it's the same manufacturer as other name-brand products. For example, Walmart shoppers only discovered that Land O'Lakes might be behind Great Value butter after a recent packaging mix-up.

Based on information like ingredient disclosures and legal and regulatory documents, we've unearthed Kik Consumer Products as the manufacturer of a few of Walmart's Great Value cleaning products. Kik is the brand behind the Great Value Cleaning Vinegar All Purpose Cleaner (one of the only cleaning supplies you need, thanks to its versatility!), according to an ingredient disclosure document that reveals the company is the manufacturer. Similarly, thanks to a legal settlement between Walmart and Kik International, LLC, there's also evidence that Kik makes the Great Value 4-in-1 Bathroom Cleaner. Other staples, like the Great Value All Purpose Cleaner and Great Value Glass Cleaner, are also suspected to be from Kik Consumer Products based on their similar formulations to brand-name alternatives.

Kik Consumer Products doesn't only make Great Value-branded cleaning products for Walmart. The company manufactures a lot of consumer products, and it specializes in household and swimming pool cleaning solutions under both generic and name brands. In fact, you might recognize some of its most popular products, like Comet – a brand that's quite well-known. At the same time, Kik Consumer Products produces private brands (such as Great Value) and creates generic equivalents for other companies, too. 

It's not exactly clear whether Great Value cleaning products are identical to name-brand variations made by Kik Consumer Products. But, there's an easy way to check if these generics just might be premium-product equals: Take a look at the ingredients list. If they match, odds are you're getting a truly "great value" on a near-identical product.