Most consumer brands have become “completely disconnected” from the manufacturers who actually make their products, he says. Keychain CEO Oisin Hanrahan.
“They don’t have anything but the brand and a bunch of marketing functions,” Hanrahan said.
That’s what Hanrahan’s company is trying to change with Keychain. Brands can use the website to search for different products, see who already makes them, and then connect with those manufacturers and potentially partner on future products.
To prove the platform’s effectiveness, Hanrahan researched the granola and yogurt I eat for breakfast every morning. Once he found the manufacturers, he said, a major retailer might partner with them to create a special version of the same granola or yogurt, or a new brand 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 ANGI, the two went on to found Keychain with Jordan Weitz.
In November 2023, the New York-based startup announced it had raised $18 million in a seed funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and then in fact Launched in FebruarySince then, Keychain says major brands and retailers have already used the platform to fulfill a $500 million manufacturing order.
Behind the scenes, Hanrahan said the company was able to use the unusually large round to build out its database of products; with the help of AI, the startup combined the data it purchased and collected directly to catalog more than 763,224 products from 24,027 manufacturers (to use the exact numbers currently displayed on Keychain’s website).
Keychain recently opened an office in Austin, signed cake maker Carvel Rich Products as a client, and Mitchell Madoff hiredwho previously led private label offerings at Whole Foods, as head of retail partnerships.
In a statement, Kevin Spratt, regional president of Rich Products in the U.S. and Canada, described the partnership as “a strategic move that will enable us to achieve greater growth, drive enhanced innovation, and deliver more unique value to our customers.”
Similarly, Paul Fogg, co-founder and CEO of beverage company Aura Pura, said in a statement that KeyChain has “dramatically simplified our supply chain” and “saved us countless hours and resources by eliminating the need to contact manufacturers individually.”
Hanrahan pointed to a variety of larger market forces that he said are driving demand for Keychain, from U.S. trade policy favoring domestic manufacturing to growing consumer interest in products specifically designed to meet different dietary and allergy needs.
Ultimately, his goal is for Keychain to connect “anyone who wants to make anything” with “every part of the supply chain,” from manufacturers to packaging.
“We want to build a software layer that connects all these pieces,” he said.