Optoro

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Optoro, Inc.
Privately held company
Industry Computer software, reverse logistics
Founder Tobin Moore, CEO; Adam Vitarello, President
Headquarters Washington, D.C.
Website http://optoro.com/

Optoro is a technology company that works with retailers and manufacturers to manage and then resell their returned and excess merchandise.[1] These products, which range from consumer electronics to home goods to clothing, are automatically listed on online marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Buy.com, BestBuy, and its own eCommerce website BLINQ.com. Through these channels, Optoro has access to more than 500 million customers.[2] Optoro also liquidates goods in bulk through its other proprietary website, BULQ.com.[3]

History

Optoro was founded in 2004 by Tobin "Toby" Moore as eSpot while he was a student at Brown University.[4] Moore and co-founder Adam Vitarello, now Optoro's president, opened one of the first eBay drop off stores in Washington, DC.[5] In 2008, the company became Optoro, Inc., and the pair opened an office and warehouse in Lanham, Maryland, where they process goods from retailers.[4] In September 2013, Optoro moved its corporate headquarters to a 13,000-square-foot office in downtown Chinatown, D.C., which now holds around 120 people.[6]

Products and services

Optoro's main product is a software-as-a-service called OptiTurn, which is used in retailers' warehouses to sort, process, and resell clients' returned and excess inventory.[7] The software tracks and dispositions inventory as it flows through a warehouse until it reaches consumers.[8] Using OptiTurn, workers mark the conditions of returned products as new, open box, refurbished, or used in good condition.[9] OptiTurn analyzes this, along with other product information, to divert items to the channel that will get retailers the most money back.[10] Possible dispositions include selling directly to consumers, reselling to wholesalers, returning to vendors for repair, donating, or recycling.[4]

OptiTurn lists products with a high resale value automatically on multiple online marketplaces under the BLINQ brand, including its own eCommerce site, BLINQ.com. The software will disposition other goods that will net a higher recovery when sold in bulk to be resold under the BULQ brand on BULQ.com.[3]

Environment

In March 2015, Optoro hired a new Sustainability Director, Ann Calamai, to measure the transportation and waste impacts of the returns industry and the effects that Optoro's solution has on retailers' carbon footprints.[11]

In early 2015, Optoro joined the mayoral competition called the Smarter DC Challenge, in which companies compete for points by completing a variety of sustainability tasks.[11] In June 2015, Optoro partnered with Measurabl, a start-up that conducts sustainability audits and provides tools for measuring corporate sustainability.[12]

Financing

In July 2013, Optoro received $23.5 million in Series B funding from three primary investors: Revolution LLC, headed by former AOL executives Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, and Donn Davis; Grotech Ventures; and SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, which was co-founded by Fredrick D. Schaufeld.[2][13] Optoro was Revolution Growth's fifth investment in its "speed-ups" investment fund, which was created to support the growth of newly formed companies and to widen the audience for their products.[13]

In December 2014, Optoro closed $50 million in funding in a Series C round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as well as Generation Investment Management, a VC company founded by Al Gore.[14] The financing from KPCB came from its Green Growth Fund.[15]

In July 2015, Optoro received $40 million in debt financing from TriplePoint Venture Growth and Square 1 Bank to support scaling its software and its consumer base.[16]

Awards

  • 2013, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, #278[17]
  • 2014, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, #229[18]
  • 2015, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, #308[19]
  • 2015, Washingtonian's 100 Top Tech Leaders, Tobin Moore and Adam Vitarello
  • 2015, CNBC Disruptor 50 List, #38 [20]
  • 2015, Ernst & Young's Greater Washington's Entrepreneur of the Year in the Emerging Growth category, Tobin Moore and Adam Vitarello[21]

References

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External links

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