What we believe
The best commerce software isn’t built by spectators. It’s built by operators who’ve felt the gap. We run the store, then we build the system.
A commerce studio that operates & engineers
We run brands.
We run brands.
Then we build the
software
that runs them.
Avenir Labs operates its own marketplace brands — and turns everything it learns into the tools other operators wish they had.
est. 2017
est. 2019
est. 2015
A studio that says yes, then ships.
Four ideas we keep coming back to — the reason the same small team can run brands and build software at the same time.
01
Say yes first.
Commit to the idea, then figure out the how. Momentum beats hesitation, every time.
02
Operators, not spectators.
We build from inside our own stores, so the tools fix problems we’ve actually hit at 2am.
03
Make it work, then make it fun.
Reliable first. Then the personality that makes people smile and keeps them coming back.
04
Small loops, big compounding.
Every venture feeds the next. We’d rather turn the flywheel than chase one-off heroics.
A decade of saying yes, one venture at a time.
Each chapter taught us what the next one needed — and quietly built toward a product we never set out to make.
2015
Giftsmate The first yes
Gifting felt impersonal. We built a personalized-gifts platform to fix it — and learned the category from the inside.
2017
TheYaYaCafe Built for marketplaces
Marketplaces arrived, so we built a brand made for them. The name came from a habit — saying “yaya,” a fun way of saying yes. It became positive, fun merch for everyday life and gifting, across Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and D2C.
2019
HopCara New category
Amazon partnered with us to do it again in kids’ fashion. Proof the playbook travels to new categories.
2026
Keel The software
After a decade of operating, the real bottleneck was running the business, not making products. So we built the tools. That became Keel.
The engine
We never drew this loop. We lived it.
Only looking back did we see the engine. One loop, four ventures — each turn making the next one stronger.
- Run the brands →
- Learn what operators need →
- Build the software →
- Compound, then repeat ↺
What we operate.
Three live marketplace brands — and the software arm they gave birth to.
01 — Flagship brandtheyayacafe.com
Positive, fun merch for everyday life and gifting. Our largest live operating environment, across Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra & D2C.
Visit site ↗ 02 — Brandhopcara.comA fun kids’ fashion brand, built with Amazon — where we proved the model travels.
Visit site ↗ 03 — Brandgiftsmate.netWhere it all began. Personalized gifting, and the demand map our brands still run on.
Visit site ↗ The software arm
04 — Product · keel.avenirlabs.com
Open Keel ↗
Keel
The AI operating system born from running all of the above. Our product.
Keel · the product
Keel — the operating system for your e-commerce store.
Listing intelligence, ads optimization, and a product backbone (PIM), wired together by AI agents. We built it to run our own 43,000 SKUs. Now we’re opening it up.
MCP tools live now · full app launching next month
A product of Avenir Labs
Founder’s note
I didn’t start in ecommerce. Avenir Labs grew out of a web studio — for years we designed, built and hosted websites for businesses across the UK: limo and car-hire firms, a residential care home, a cake shop, a raceway, property and design clients. We learned how to make things work online, for other people, one project at a time.
Building for others taught us the web; running our own brands taught us commerce. It began in 2015 with Giftsmate, because gifting felt impersonal and we thought we could do better. When marketplaces took off we built TheYaYaCafe for them, and later HopCara in kids’ fashion with Amazon — three brands and tens of thousands of SKUs across Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and D2C.
Through all of it, the hard part was never making the products — it was running everything around them: the listings, the ads, the catalogue, the 2am fixes. The software I kept wishing for didn’t exist, so we built our own. That became Keel. From building websites for other people to building the system that runs our own stores, it’s been the same job all along: make commerce work, then make the tools that make it easier.
Early web clients HWSelect · What Limo UK · Limo Broker · Any Car Hire · Joshua Altback · Island Residential Home · Emperium · Richard Hartley · Bedottie · Buttercup Cake Shop · Alain Raceway
Amit Sharma, Founder, Avenir Labs
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