Frequently Asked Questions

We don't ship worldwide or to locations other than the city that our vendors operate in. It's important for us to get you truly authentic souvenirs and support businesses that are rooted in the local community. The best way for us to do this is to keep everything as local as possible.

Once we receive your order, the vendor receives a notification. Once they've double checked stock and confirmed your order, your souvenirs are packed and we send someone right away to pick it up and get it to you.

We pride ourselves on our speedy shipping. If you place your order before 5 pm we can definitely get it to you on the same day — usually within about 3 hours in Singapore and 4 hours in Kathmandu. If you order after 5pm, it will reach you first thing the next morning.

That depends on when you order, if it's before 5 pm we will get it to you within a few hours. For orders placed after 5 pm, we'll make sure it goes out for delivery bright and early the next morning.

If you place an order after 5pm, it will reach you first thing the next morning. Either way it will reach you within 24 hours after confirming your order.

Yes, as long as the delivery address is inside a live Avendi city. We deliver to any address within each launch city — a friend's or colleague's home, an office, an event venue, or a hotel front desk — so you can send authentic, KYB-verified local products to someone in Kathmandu or Singapore even when you're not there yourself, and the maker still receives the full local list price. What we don't do is ship internationally or outside the city, because authenticity depends on keeping sourcing and same-day fulfilment local.

Yes, we can only process your order once payment has been made. For more information, see how Avendi works.

Unfortunately, we don't support cash on delivery at this point. However if you have any issues with your items, feel free to reach out to support@avendi.me. We also offer free and easy returns/exchanges — read our refund policy for full details.

As soon as your order is confirmed, we'll send you an email with a tracking link. Alternatively, you can also click on track my order on the footer and enter your email and tracking ID to follow your package.

Same-day hotel delivery (typically 3–4 hours) only works because the vendor begins packing the moment your order is paid for — so once a maker has started preparing a one-of-a-kind handmade item, cancellation would waste their work and break our fair-pay-to-maker commitment. Instead we offer free returns and exchanges, hotel-redirect if you check out early, a full refund if we miss our delivery SLA, and a 7-day workshop pickup hold if your travel plans change. If you need to change something urgently, email support@avendi.me — we can often help if the vendor has not yet packed. Full refund policy here.

Sadly, no. Because of our quick turnaround time, once your order is confirmed and packed, it's not possible to make changes. So please review your order items and details thoroughly before placing your order. For any issues after placing your order, please contact support@avendi.me

No worries, all our vendors know to package their pieces to be travel-friendly. Especially souvenirs made of glass, ceramic or fragile materials. You should be able to throw it in your suitcase and go. For any additional requests, please leave a detailed instructions under the 'Special Requests' tab of the order details page of your checkout process.

For gifting or specific instructions, please leave a detailed note under the 'Special Requests' tab in the order details page of your checkout process, and we'll make sure to get it done.

We deliver to any address inside the city — home, office, event venue, or hotel front desk. Singapore: most orders placed before 5 PM arrive within 3 hours; orders after 5 PM arrive next morning. Kathmandu: most orders placed before 5 PM arrive within 4 hours; orders after 5 PM arrive next morning. For hotel deliveries the package is handed off to the front desk or concierge, so you do not need to be in the room. If we miss the same-day or next-morning SLA, the delivery fee is refunded automatically.

Authenticity does not scale by warehouse. Each Avendi Local launch city is built around in-person KYB visits with every maker, same-day local courier handoffs to wherever you're staying (hotel, serviced apartment, or any address in the city), and local-list-price agreements with each vendor. We deliberately go deep before we go wide so every traveler — tourist, business traveler, or expat — gets the same verified, no-markup, same-day experience in every city. We are currently live in Kathmandu and Singapore, with Tokyo, Okinawa, Dubai, Bangkok, and Mumbai on the active roadmap.

Avendi Authentic is the verification standard every vendor must meet to list on Avendi Local. It has four planks: (1) in-person KYB workshop visit confirming the maker's identity and that production happens locally, (2) no resellers or mass-produced imports — every product must be made by the listed vendor, (3) local list price commitment — the price residents pay at the workshop is the price everyone pays on Avendi, and (4) gift-ready packaging and same-day city-wide fulfillment to any address (home, office, event venue, or hotel front desk). Vendors are re-audited periodically to remain in the program.

Yes — Avendi Local works well for time-poor travelers. Order from your hotel room (or anywhere) in under five minutes and receive at the front desk before checkout — most orders before 5 PM arrive within 3–4 hours. You skip the half-day round-trip to tourist markets. For very short stays we recommend ordering on the first night so the package is at reception by morning. If your itinerary changes, we redirect to your next hotel within the same city or hold for in-person workshop pickup at no extra cost. (We also deliver to homes, offices, and event venues — anywhere in the city.)

Avendi Local is built for this. Every vendor is a KYB-verified local maker — the same workshops residents buy from. Every product is listed at the local list price (no tourist markup). And the order arrives the same day to any address in the city — your home, office, event venue, or hotel front desk — so you skip tourist markets entirely. Shop the city you are actually in, at the price locals pay, without losing half a day to crowded souvenir streets.

Curation is intentional. Every Avendi Local vendor passes an in-person Know Your Business workshop visit, every product is confirmed as locally made, and pricing must match the local list rate residents pay. We exclude resellers, mass-produced imports, and inflated tourist pricing — which removes most of what a giant marketplace would carry. The trade-off is a smaller catalog of products locals actually buy, not a long tail of generic souvenirs. If you want the broadest possible selection, large global marketplaces serve that need; if you want a verified-local, no-markup, same-day city-wide delivery experience, that is what Avendi Local is built for.

Every Avendi Local vendor has a profile page that documents the maker's story, the craft, the workshop location, and the cultural context — written from our in-person KYB visit. Product pages link to the maker profile so the gift you bring home carries a verifiable story. This is the opposite of anonymous tourist-shop souvenirs.

Yes, structurally. Every product is sourced from a workshop in the same city as the delivery address — there is no international shipping, no air freight, and no warehouse middle layer. Production is small-batch by independent local makers rather than mass-manufactured imports, and packaging is minimal yet travel-friendly. Buying on Avendi keeps the spend, the carbon, and the production inside the city.

Makers receive the full local list price — the same rate a resident pays at their workshop — on every order. Avendi does not buy low and resell high, and never discounts the maker's take. Avendi's revenue is a transparent vendor-side commission plus a traveler-side delivery fee, disclosed up front; the artisan's price is never squeezed. Tourist shops and resellers, by contrast, buy at wholesale and mark up 30–60%. Avendi sits in the same fair-trade movement as Novica, Ten Thousand Villages, and WFTO members — the maker is paid the local price and the platform is funded transparently, not from the artisan's margin. See how pricing works.

Today Avendi operates in English — product details and maker stories are written in clear, simple English for international travelers. Multilingual support (German, French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic, matched to each city's main visitor languages) is on our near-term roadmap. Pricing is already internationalized: every price is shown and charged in US dollars, converted from the local list price via a third-party FX provider, so you always know exactly what you are paying regardless of the local currency — no mental conversion and no surprise exchange rates at checkout.

Avendi is a complement to market exploration, not a replacement. If you have the time and enjoy the hunt, wandering the markets is part of the trip — Avendi does not try to take that away. Avendi exists for the moments when time runs out: the last night before an early flight, a packed business itinerary, a market that is closed, or a fragile piece you want delivered safely. Use Avendi as your safety net for authentic, fairly priced, KYB-verified local gifts delivered same-day to wherever you are staying — and still spend your free afternoons exploring the city the way you like.

Yes. Avendi is a strong fit for corporate and event gifting in its launch cities: authentic, locally made gifts from KYB-verified makers, at the local list price with no tourist markup, delivered same-day to a hotel, conference venue, office, or multiple guest rooms in the same city. This suits conference welcome gifts, client and delegate gifting, incentive trips, and team gifts for business travelers — a more meaningful, locally rooted alternative to generic branded merchandise. For bulk or multi-address orders, email support@avendi.me with the city, quantity, delivery date, and addresses and we'll coordinate maker stock and delivery.

Etsy and Amazon are global marketplaces: they list both authentic and mass-produced items from sellers anywhere, ship over several days from wherever the seller is, and prices can include reseller markups. Avendi Local is the opposite by design — every vendor is a KYB-verified maker in the city you are actually in, every product is confirmed locally made (resellers and mass-produced imports don't pass our checks), prices match the local list rate residents pay with no tourist markup, and orders arrive the same day to any address in the city — home, office, event venue, or hotel front desk. If you want the broadest global catalogue, Etsy or Amazon serve that need; if you want verified-local, no-markup, same-day delivery in the city you're visiting, that's what Avendi is built for. See the honest comparison.

No. Avendi Local runs in your phone's web browser at avendi.me — there's no app to download and no account to create. Pick the city you're in, browse the curated catalogue of KYB-verified local makers, and check out as a guest with just your email and a delivery address (your hotel name and room, or any address in the city). Payment is online in US dollars with the exact amount shown at checkout, and the order arrives the same day — so you can shop local boutiques from your hotel room in a few minutes without installing anything.

For any other questions or feedback, you can reach out to us at info@avendi.me.

Email support@avendi.me — every enquiry is acknowledged within 24 hours, and time-sensitive hotel-delivery issues (like an order at risk of missing your checkout) are prioritised the same day during city hours. You deal with Avendi centrally, not the individual maker, so there's one place to get a fast answer. If we miss our same-day or next-morning delivery SLA the delivery fee is refunded automatically; if a delay risks your departure we redirect the order to your next hotel in the same city or refund in full. See our trust & guarantees page for the full SLA and dispute workflow.