Forbes says Optoro is one of the ‘Next Billion Dollar Startups’

Optoro, a D.C. company focusing on helping big-name companies figure out what to do with the merchandise that doesn’t sell or is returned, was awarded a spot on Forbes‘ “The Next Billion-Dollar Startups” list for 2017.

Future unicorns: introducing the Next Billion-Dollar Startups list of 2017 https://t.co/9BTAvx1Doj pic.twitter.com/tBflG0GKGn

— Forbes (@Forbes) September 26, 2017

Forbes also took the chance to profile Optoro in the September issue of their magazine, writing about how the company was founded, survived the 2008 recession and came to work with big-name companies, including Home Depot and Best Buy, and UPS.  The company uses algorithms to process the rejected items that come through its warehouse, figuring out where to sell the merchandise to earn the greatest percentage of its retail value.

The reverse-logistics business that Optoro is a part of existed before 2004 when Tobin Moore founded the company.  But Moore was successful in part because he was one of the first people to consider using data and analytics to deal with the overstock and return problem more systematically. Optoro also benefits by taking in a wide range of products, whereas other reverse-logistics companies specialize in a certain product, and has been successful at several rounds of fundraising, all of which have contributed to its success.

The Forbes list tracks companies using venture firm-estimates and projected income for this year to guess which companies will be valued at over a billion dollars this year, and selects 25 companies based on additional analysis.