Omnia Fishing Raises $2.1M from Uber, BuzzFeed Investors to Expand Shop-by-Lake E-Commerce

MINNEAPOLIS, (March 2, 2021) – Omnia Fishing, the fastest growing e-commerce brand in the fishing industry, today announces they have closed on a new $2.1 million round of funding led by investors Founder Collective and Dundee Venture Capital to capitalize on tremendous growth in sales and in the usage of their social network. Omnia has created an online fishing guide that allows anglers to file fishing reports at more than 10,000 water bodies across the United States and uses the crowdsourced data to recommend the ideal tackle for the local conditions. Omnia is filling a knowledge gap to help anglers discover and purchase tackle and gear based on location and time of year.

“We’ve brought in high-quality investors that recognize the massive size of the market and the improved ways Omnia serves anglers,” said Omnia Founder and CEO Matt Johnson. “This capital will accelerate growth on all fronts.”

Alongside Founder Collective and Dundee, the round included participation from Bread and Butter Ventures, GAN Ventures, Sioux Falls Angels, Southeast Minnesota Capital Fund, Ralph Castner and local angel investors including Daren Cotter.

“Omnia is using technology to fill a knowledge gap that has been left as big-box stores and online discounters have forced local tackle shops out of business,” said Micah Rosenbloom of Founder Collective, a venture capital firm that provided seed capital to Uber, BuzzFeed, and PillPack. “Their software and e-commerce expertise, paired with the local knowledge of Omnia’s ambassadors, makes this a massive opportunity and we couldn’t be more excited to support the course they’ve charted.”

Johnson pointed to the 10 million additional fishing licenses purchased in 2020 as just one indicator of how the pandemic will forever change the fishing industry. He said, “The pandemic forced people into the outdoors, but it also forced our model of serving anglers that still need help finding relevant tackle products online based on the lakes they fish. The transition to e-commerce has been slow but with the technology to sort products by location and time of year, we can scale and improve on the in-store experience, accelerating this retail shift in the industry.”

The move to e-commerce has not been lost on Omnia investors.

“We are so thrilled to be working with Matt, Dan, Chris, and the Omnia team to revolutionize how tackle is bought,” said Dundee VC Partner Greg Beaufait. ” Placing the right products in the right context at the right time is where leading e-commerce retailers separate themselves, and the Omnia team has perfected this contextual experience in a $50 billion-plus industry poorly served by static big-box retailers.”

Omnia currently carries more than 9000 SKUs from more than 100 brands including Outkast Tackle, Daiwa, Megabass, St. Croix, Woo! And Picasso. With the new investment, Omnia plans to scale that to 25,0000 SKUs by the end of the year by investing in their merchandising and buying team. Omnia will also focus on continuing to optimize user acquisition and UX and continue to fine-tune their algorithm, which allows all products to be tagged to a lake, state, species, styles, product, water clarity, structure and season.

About Omnia Fishing

Omnia Fishing was born from the premise that anglers rely on data about the changing, complex relationships between water body details, fish species, fishing styles, and season. Omnia knows that the way we buy our tackle and gear is so intricately connected to our fishing preferences and location. Omnia is the first company to digitize the in-store experience by building a personalized online tackle shopping experience that provides tackle recommendations for each lake at that specific time of year. Additionally, thousands of fishing reports have been filed by customers to indicate what products have been working in real-time. The result is a constantly improving, lake specific recommended for tackle and techniques.

About Founder Collective

Founder Collective is a seed-stage venture capital firm with offices in Cambridge, MA, and New York City, and has invested in startups like Uber, The Trade Desk, Airtable, PillPack, and Coupang.

About Dundee Venture Capital

Dundee Venture Capital was formed in 2010 to lead seed rounds in the best technology entrepreneurs in the Mighty Middle, markets historically underserved by venture capital.

Dundee has over $75 million under management across three funds and has invested in 50 world-class founding teams in 20 different cities since 2010. Dundee has offices in Chicago, Omaha, St. Louis and Minneapolis.