By Chrissie Cluney, Contributing Editor
Otto debuted their digital lock back in August. Four months later, the company suspended their operations. The company suspended production just ahead of the holidays.
“You’re not in charge of your own destiny, and the margin for error is a lot smaller,” said Sam Jadallah, founder and CEO, Otto. “Building a really exciting hardware product needs a ton of resources, and is probably best inside of a bigger company. Frankly, that’s part of the reason I was excited about the acquisition. I knew it would take us out of the cyclical venture capital market and put us inside a company that knew how to make and ship products.”
Otto was almost hopeful by the recent acquisition of August Home by Assa Abloy. This company is the world’s largest lock manufacturer. Otto thought it had found the “key”, despite the fact that the company’s product garnered a fair amount of pushback at launch.
“They knew about the price before the first meeting, and they are very smart people,” said Jadallah. “This isn’t the story of an ambitious product that didn’t have a market. I was convinced that we had priced it the right way for the product, and we knew that the technology that we had innovated was something that we could use in different ways at other price point.”
They were still advertising the product early in the month of December. However, they have since then stopped their advertising campaign.
