Golden Valley Tackle Shop Uses App To Make Finding Fish Easier
CCX News first caught up with Omnia Fishing in 2019. That was just months after the business started. Now, their business has outgrown its last Golden Valley location, and a few years ago opened its doors in a large warehouse.
“We have the biggest selection of tackle in Minnesota,” said CEO and co-founder Matt Johnson.
It doesn’t just reach Minnesota. The company goes nationwide, shipping tackle to all 50 states. On Tuesday morning, Johnson showed a few different orders, shipping to Minnesota, Tennessee and Illinois. He said any order that comes in before 1 p.m. on the website is shipped out that day.
The company’s biggest offering is its app and website, which shares customized suggestions based on the lake you’re hoping to fish at. Johnson said this idea was partly born to fill the gaps between online and in-store tackle shopping.
“Our underlying idea was always that people are going in-store because they want to ask questions,” Johnson said. “They want to say: ‘I’m going to this lake, and I want to catch this fish and this species. What do you recommend?'”
An Omni employee packages an order. The website services all 50 states, with gear recommendations on a lake-by-lake basis.
A Good Catch
Johnson said there is nothing really like their model. On Omnia’s app and website, anglers can check out fishing insights. They’re written by people who’ve fished there before, with information like what they caught and what they used to catch it.
“Over time, we’ve built this wealth of over 30,000 fishing reports across the country. So you could, today, decide you want to catch a fish in Florida, and use the system the same way you’d use it in Minnesota and get totally different recommendations,” Johnson said.
Johnson demonstrated the system, using Medicine Lake as an example. There were 68 different “Fishing Reports” listed there, with an opportunity for people to summarize all those responses with AI.
He also shared how you could use the Pro feature on the app to check the wind speed and water temperature of lakes across the country. That’s a recent add over the last year.
“It just really gives you this opportunity to really break out and understand a lot about what’s going on in this specific water body,” Johnson said.
The reports also often include examples of gear they used. Anglers can buy that gear right from Omnia. Johnson said that streamlined experience, with advice right on site, can give people more confidence when they shop. He hopes this will also keep more people in the game.
“The fishing industry actually has a leaky bucket problem. So we do a really good job bringing new people into the system, but we lose people every year. Our theory is it’s because they are not having a good enough experience,” Johnson said. “We really are trying to address that middle skill level consumer, who wants to accelerate their learning process to be more successful.”
Johnson demonstrates the Omnia app’s pro features.
