Dymo

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Dymo Corporation is an American manufacturing company of handheld label printers and thermal-transfer printing tape as accessory, embossing tape label makers, and other printers such as CD and DVD labelers and durable medical equipment.

Dymo

Basic information
Founded	1958
Legal structure	Subsidiary
Industry	Electronics
Official website	https://www.dymo.com/

The company is a subsidiary of Newell Brands.

Anti-consumer practices

Restriction to first party labels

The Dymo LabelWriter 550 Turbo and other 500 series label printers have introduced a controversial feature: DRM (Digital Rights Management) via RFID tags in their consumables. Affected printers come with "Automatic Label Recognition™", a marketing term that translates to DRM implementation in thermal labels. This system restricts users to purchasing only Dymo-branded labels, potentially increasing costs and limiting consumer choice.

This move has sparked frustration among users and prompted the hacking community to develop a solution to remove the restrictions that is available via a free license on GitHub.

Subtle Marketing

As of 2025-08-20 Dymo continues selling the LabelWriter 550 Turbo with the exclusivity of their labels as a feature stating:

"EXCLUSIVELY WORKS WITH DYMO-BRANDED LABELS: LabelWriter 550 Turbo printers are carefully calibrated to only work with DYMO-branded labels saving you time, money and effort"

When comparing their archived product page from 2024 to today's 2025-08-20 product page and those previous to it, the current product page lists the above quote at the top of the feature list compared to previous iterations where the feature of "Automatic Label Recognition™" was listed at the top with the exclusivity disclosure listed further down the list. One could surmise that the more recent revision to the listings order could be due to pressure from consumers who bought the device without realizing it would only accept first party labels. This subtle listing order may have impacted consumers negatively by leveraging marketing tactics which affect the reader's decision making.

Features listed higher in the list for example in this case "Automatic Label Recognition™" being listed first in the 2024 version of the site. Readers will see "Automatic Label Recognition™ first marketing research shows that items at the beginning of a list attract the attention and are more likely to be remembered when considering a purchase. While in the later revision of the site as seen on 2025-08-20 the order has changed where the seemingly least-desirable feature of label exclusivity is listed first which would allow the consumer to make a more informed decision before purchasing the label printer.

Business Tactics and Other Models

This DRM locked consumable type of business tactic is not unfamiliar among different industries or variances in product. It can be found in the refrigerator industry in the form of water filters, power tool industry in the form of batteries, automotive industry in the form of parts or diagnostic software, or most commonly known the printing industry.

In some cases, it can be that a standard for the consumable hasn't been agreed upon or the technology is proprietary to the company, but in most cases it's a form of greed locking the consumer into a product that they are then required to purchase in many cases at a significantly inflated price. For example, a printer company might sell a printer at next to or less than the cost to build it as a loss leader, but now that the consumer has bought into their product line, they are obliged through marketing, embedded DRM, or necessity to purchase the consumables for the product from the original manufacturer.