Despite having a very promising start, the Ripple-backed startup recently announced that it will be shutting down its business by the end of the year. The company announced that it will be completely going out of business, with Coinbase hiring at least 10 of their current employees. According to trustworthy reports, this decision came as a result of a dwindling 2019, a year that saw staff layouts, physical store sales and many other efforts put into keeping the business afloat.
A Brief Overview of Omni’s History
As a reminder, Omni has originally launched a little over four years ago, in 2015. It started as a unique service for personal storage, collecting items from their customers and storing them in a warehouse until they need them again.
Two years later, in 2017, Omni introduced a new feature of its service by letting users rent out what they were storing to provide them with extra money-making opportunities. It also moved into helping retail stores run their programs. Unfortunately, as this change required from both users and merchants to make a drastic shift without significant rewards, this attempt didn’t fare well on the market.
It 2018, it seemed that the company finally managed to gain some ground and that it will finally be able to establish itself as a significant player, as it raised $25 million from the crypto company Ripple. One of the biggest reasons why Omni went out of business were the ballooning storage prices and invaluable storage prices, especially because users could get a much more efficient delivery system from Amazon.
During its relatively short existence, the service has managed to make a dent in the industry. However, despite its performance on the market, we are still left with a question of whether the investors and ex-partners will get any of their cashback.