After reeling in $1 million earlier this year, Omnia Fishing said today that it had received an additional investment from Bread and Butter Ventures, a newly-formed Twin Cities venture capital group.
Golden Valley-based Omnia, which offers an e-commerce platform recommending tackled based on the lakes anglers fish, raised an additional $500,000, closing its recent seed round at $1.5 million.
"In a time of such uncertainty, we've been lucky to have exceeded our targets this year and re-open our round to accept important capital from incredible investors, like the team at Bread and Butter, to both accelerate our growth and extend our runway," Omnia CEO Matt Johnson said in a statement.
Since its launch in 2018, Omnia has indexed around 150,000 lakes and has customers across the country. Johnson said that the company shipped orders to 42 different states last month.
"Anglers looking for a better and more personalized online tackle shopping experience and getting out on the water for a natural social distancing activity has created a unique business opportunity for us," Johnson said.
Omnia made its first acquisition last year, scooping up BassUtopia.com. The company says it has also seen rapid growth through an expanding platform of brand ambassadors that can provide personalized insights on different lakes.
Bread and Butter, led by Brett Brohl, Mary Grove and Stephanie Rich, officially launched last month. Brohl is the managing director of the St. Paul-based Techstars Farm to Fork ag-tech accelerator. Rich is Farm to Fork’s entrepreneur in residence and the founder of local tech news site Starting Up North.
Grove is a former Google executive. Around two years ago, she moved to Minnesota to become a partner in Revolution and make investments from the firm’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
Bread and Butter is the evolution of The Syndicate Fund, a venture capital group founded by Brohl around four years ago.
"We have been extremely impressed with Omnia's team and their ability to disrupt an industry that has been slow to adapt to consumer needs," Brohl said in a statement. "We believe they are figuring out how to translate the personal in-store experience that has so long been core to the $4 billion fishing industry into a scalable online solution."
