Optoro operates a returns technology platform that uses data science and real-time decision-making automation to route returned items to optimal outcomes across resale, restocking, and secondary markets. Its product suite includes an online customer returns portal, warehouse processing, and resale software. Retail and brand customers named in the article include American Eagle, Best Buy, Target, Staples, and IKEA. The company says its solutions decrease inefficiencies, maximize recovery and repurchases, and reduce environmental waste while improving customer experience. In December 2021 Optoro received a $25 million strategic investment led by Zebra Technologies with participation from Volta Circle, eBay, and UPS. Optoro is partnering with Zebra to combine its software with Zebra’s hardware and pursue new end-to-end reverse logistics solutions to accelerate returns processing and cut waste. Optoro provides software and logistics solutions that help retailers — online and brick-and-mortar — more easily resell returned and excess inventory. The company uses data analytics and multi-channel online marketing to determine the best path for each item, aiming to maximize recovery and reduce environmental waste. Its customers include big-box and other legacy retailers facing rising online return rates, which the CEO says are two to three times those of brick-and-mortar sales. The business addresses a large market: returns represented roughly 10% of sales in 2017 (about $351 billion) per the article. Optoro is described as an eight-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company with a growing base of customers. Financially, the company recently secured new funding and has attracted a mix of strategic and growth investors. Optoro is a Lanham, MD-based platform that helps retailers and manufacturers manage, process and sell returned and excess inventory. Its technology uses comprehensive data analytics and multi-channel online marketing to determine the best path for each item. The platform is designed to maximize recovery and reduce environmental waste. The company will use the $30M Series D proceeds to accelerate adoption of its solution across retailers and brands. In connection with the investment, Optoro and UPS formed a strategic alliance to provide a shop solution for retailers and manufacturers to optimize transportation and disposition of returned and excess inventory. Tobin Moore is co-founder and CEO. Optoro operates a software platform that connects buyers and sellers to manage returned and excess inventory, using data analytics to determine the best path for goods. Its technology processes, sorts and sells products to optimize recovery and reduce waste. Working with some of the largest U.S. retailers, Optoro says clients have increased recovery on such inventory by 50–200 percent. The company highlights industry-wide metrics — over 15% of inventory is returned annually, amounting to roughly $500 billion in the U.S. alone. Founded in 2008 and based in Washington, DC and Maryland, Optoro plans to scale its operations and technology to support the world’s biggest retailers. Financially, the company has raised over $100 million to date, including recent equity and debt financings. Optoro provides a cloud-based platform that manages, prices and routes returned and excess inventory across multiple digital channels, including eBay, Amazon and its consumer site BLINQ.com. The company uses predictive analytics and dynamic pricing to optimize channel allocation and typically increases recovery value for returns and excess by 2x–10x. Optoro’s platform directly reaches more than 500 million customers worldwide and sells simultaneously across over a dozen digital marketplaces. Its business model emphasizes sustainability by remarketing goods, connecting items to recyclers, or donating unsellable products to keep them out of landfills. Optoro has partnered with Trees for the Future to plant a tree for every order on BLINQ.com and has planted over 100,000 trees to date. The company plans to scale major partnerships and expand into new markets using the proceeds from its latest fundraise.

Total raised

$254M

Funding rounds

9

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Dec 2021