Keychain CEO Oisin Hanrahan said most consumer brands are “totally disconnected” from the manufacturers who actually make their products.
“They don't own anything except the brand and the marketing suite,” Hanrahan said.
That's exactly what Hanrahan is hoping to change with the keychains: brands can use the website to search different products, see who actually makes them, and reach out to those manufacturers to potentially partner on future products.
To demonstrate the platform, Hanrahan looked at the granola and yogurt I have for breakfast every morning. By knowing the source, he said, major retailers could work with them to create private-label versions of the same granola or yogurt, or new brands might want to create something healthier or more environmentally friendly.
Hanrahan and Umang Dua previously founded home services marketplace Handy, which was acquired by ANGI Homeservices, where Hanrahan served as CEO until 2023. After leaving ANGI, the duo founded Keychain with Jordan Weitz.
The New York-based startup announced in November 2023 that it would raise $18 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and actually launched in February. Since then, Keychain says that major brands and retailers have already used the platform to fulfill $500 million worth of manufacturing needs.
Oisin Hanrahan at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017. Image courtesy of TechCrunch
Behind the scenes, Hanrahan said the company was able to leverage the unusually large funding round to build out its product database: With the help of AI, the startup combined purchased and first-hand data to index more than 763,224 products from 24,027 manufacturers (with the exact number currently displayed on Keychain's website).
Key Chain recently opened an office in Austin, signed Carvel cake maker Rich Products as a client and hired Mitchell Madoff, who previously ran private-label products at Whole Foods, as head of retail partnerships.
In a statement, Kevin Spratt, president of Rich Products' U.S./Canada region, described the partnership as “a strategic move that will enable the company to drive further growth, foster enhanced innovation and deliver even more unique value to our customers.”
Similarly, Paul Voagt, co-founder and CEO of beverage company Aura Bora, said in a statement that the keychain has “significantly streamlined our supply chain” and “saved countless time and resources by eliminating the need to contact manufacturers individually.”
Hanrahan pointed to a variety of big market forces driving demand for key chains, from U.S. trade policies that favor domestic manufacturing to growing consumer interest in products tailored to different nutritional and allergy needs.
Ultimately, his goal is for the keychain to connect “anyone who wants to make something” with “every part of the supply chain, from the manufacturer to the packaging.”
“We want to build a software layer that ties all these pieces together,” he said.