- Business
- Zalando SE operates as Europe's leading pan-European online platform for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce, connecting customers, brands and partners across 25 countries including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom; it offers an extensive assortment of approximately 890,000 SKUs encompassing women's and men's textile, footwear, accessories, underwear, beachwear, sports, designer, kids and beauty products from around 4,000 brands, complemented by six in-house private labels--Anna Field, Even & Odd, Friboo, Pier One, Yourturn and Zign--alongside offprice channels via Lounge by Zalando shopping club and outlet stores, personalized AI-powered recommendations, size guidance, conversational Zalando Assistant, pre-owned fashion trading launched in 2020, and proprietary Buy Now Pay Later payment solutions processing around 20 billion euros annually. The Berlin-headquartered company, founded in 2008 by Robert Gentz and David Schneider, employs over 15,000 people from 140 nationalities and leverages advanced infrastructure including its in-house payments platform with e-Money license, Zalando Marketing Services for multichannel brand growth, and ZEOS--established as a brand in 2023--providing fulfillment, shipping, returns, software and services for multi-channel e-commerce operations enabling partners to manage inventory from warehouses, partner programs and connected retail stores across Europe. In recent developments, Zalando completed its strategic combination with ABOUT YOU Holding SE in July 2025 following European Commission approval, acquiring 91.45% of its share capital with a planned squeeze-out merger finalizing full ownership by November 2025 to create a dual-brand B2C strategy and integrate ABOUT YOU's SCAYLE with ZEOS and Tradebyte for enhanced B2B logistics, software and synergies targeting around 100 million euros in annual Group EBIT savings, while expanding its AI-powered discovery feed to 16 additional markets in October 2025, adjusting 2025 guidance for 12-15% GMV growth and 12.1-12.4 billion euros in revenue, and advancing collaborations such as with NEXT for multi-channel fulfillment.