EQS-News: Zalando Sees Accelerating Growth This Year Following Strong 2024 Performance, Driven by Successful Execution of Ecosystem Strategy

Zalando Sees Accelerating Growth This Year Following Strong 2024 Performance, Driven by Successful Execution of Ecosystem Strategy
 

• 2025 Outlook: Gross merchandise volume (GMV) and revenue are expected to grow between 4% and 9%, driven by the successful execution of Zalando’s ecosystem strategy across both growth vectors business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B). Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (adjusted EBIT) are expected to increase to a level between 530 million euros and 590 million euros.

• 2024 Performance: 2024 GMV and revenue come in both in the upper half of the guidance, with 4.5% and 4.2% growth, respectively. Adjusted EBIT reaches 511 million euros, up from 350 million euros a year earlier, and surpassing the updated guidance for 440-480 million euros.

• Active Customer Growth: Zalando returns to active customer growth in 2024, with the number of active customers increasing by 4.5% to an all-time high of 51.8 million.

Berlin, 6 March 2025 // Zalando SE expects its growth to accelerate in 2025 after a strong 2024 financial performance, driven by the successful execution of its strategy to build the leading pan-European fashion and lifestyle e-commerce ecosystem along two growth vectors B2C and B2B.

“Our ecosystem strategy is progressing well and is our exciting new North Star. It has already contributed to a strong financial performance in 2024, and we now accelerate our execution efforts and invest to capture future growth,” said Robert Gentz, Zalando co-CEO. “In our B2C growth vector, we are rolling out our updated loyalty programme, expanding our lifestyle offerings in areas such as sports, and inspiring customers through exciting content integrations. In B2B, we are almost doubling the markets we are operating in and offering more advanced software and logistics solutions to serve brands’ and retailers’ own webshops and apps.”

In 2025, Zalando expects GMV and revenue to grow between 4% and 9%, compared with 2024, and adjusted EBIT to reach a level between 530 million euros and 590 million euros. The guidance does not account for effects from the planned acquisition of Hamburg-based ABOUT YOU. In 2024, Zalando demonstrated that even in a rather muted macroeconomic environment, the company is able to find pockets of growth. GMV increased by 4.5%, reaching 15.3 billion euros, while revenue grew by 4.2% to 10.6 billion euros.

Driven by its focus on driving profitable growth, Zalando’s adjusted EBIT reached 511 million euros in 2024, up from 350 million euros a year earlier, and surpassing the updated guidance for 440-480 million euros. The adjusted EBIT margin rose from 3.5 percent in 2023 to 4.8 percent in 2024, supported by strong operational efficiencies and a significantly higher B2C gross margin, which saw a year-on-year increase of more than 2 percentage points to 43.5%.

The company’s active customer base increased to an all-time high of 51.8 million active customers by the end of 2024, marking a 4.5% rise from the previous year.

Zalando’s first strategic pillar in the B2C business is to differentiate itself through quality to offer the best possible shopping experience in fashion and lifestyle, and a key initiative in 2025 is to roll out the company’s updated loyalty programme Zalando Plus further. The programme has already been successfully launched in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria, and will be rolled out to most markets in 2025. Zalando will also expand its platform into new markets, launching in Portugal, Greece and Bulgaria.

In 2024, the company also made significant strides in onboarding new, highly relevant brands and assortments like Versace menswear, Marine Serre, On, and Fjällräven, enhancing its Designer and Sports offerings. In February, Zalando also became the exclusive retailer for the iconic designer brand Diane von Furstenberg in Europe. In addition, Zalando improved product presentation through elevated product detail pages, and is taking the product experience even further with tailored and innovative digital experiences such as its digital size advice for customers based on reference items and body measurements. Since the initial launch in 2022, Zalando has also doubled the Adaptive fashion assortment, offering its customers more than 600 Adaptive styles in the course of 2024 - 170 more than the year before - across several categories, including footwear, sports and kidswear.

The company also continues to invest in providing the best local convenience in each market. Zalando’s proprietary “try before you pay” solution, allowing customers to pay with various methods at a later point after checkout, was a success in Germany and has been successfully expanded to 8 more markets.

Zalando’s second strategic B2C pillar around making Zalando a lifestyle destination saw a strong 2024 increase in the number of customers using different propositions, led by its Fashion offering and followed by Lounge by Zalando, Beauty, Kids & Family, and Sports. The company is elevating these categories into powerful lifestyle propositions with comprehensive assortments, personalised inspiration, and seamless convenience. Zalando is also rolling out existing propositions to more markets: The Beauty proposition will be expanded to Spain and Finland, then serving customers in 13 European markets. Lounge by Zalando is being expanded to 5 more markets in 2025, to then be available in 22 markets.

For the third strategic B2C pillar - offering customers personalised inspiration and entertainment - the company further evolved Stories on Zalando, the content hub that engages customers around exciting fashion and culture trends. Since its launch in late 2023, more than 500 stories featuring over 700 brands and 7,000 products have been published.

In 2025, Zalando will continue experimenting with new content sources, types and formats. To diversify and scale the content pipeline for Stories on Zalando, Zalando has launched the Follow My Style feature, inviting talents to give followers and fans access to their style and beauty preferences. With its so-called boards, the company will enable users to create curated boards dedicated to a specific topic or lifestyle theme, such as "Urban Running" and "Parisian Skater Kids.” Zalando is also piloting an outfit builder experience called Stylelt, which allows users to style a complete outfit on the avatar of their choice, letting them experiment with different looks and share their inspirations with friends, family, and followers. The company will launch an integrated and immersive discovery feed to bring new, exciting experiences together, tailored to individual customer preferences.

In B2B, where Zalando is opening up its logistics infrastructure, software, and service capabilities to be a key enabler for brands' and retailers' e-commerce transactions with its ZEOS operation system, regardless of whether they take place on or off its platform, the company is building on the strong foundation laid in 2024.

In its logistic offering, ZEOS now serves 12 markets following the launch in Switzerland, Poland and Spain. Beyond that, merchants can now sell on 10 different channels, including brands’ own e-com destinations, as well as via 9 marketplaces that collectively cover 85 percent of the total marketplace volume in Europe. Zalando also gave merchants more control over their fulfilment business by launching and expanding logistics functionalities in ZEOS.ONE, the central control panel.

In 2025, ZEOS is becoming the partner of choice for UK-based fashion, home and beauty retailer NEXT in fulfilling online direct-to-consumer orders for most of continental Europe. Through this partnership, ZEOS will introduce new fulfilment features that will benefit all ZEOS clients in the future. These include advanced fulfilment capabilities - like virtual bonded warehousing - as well as enhanced onboarding and inventory management capabilities. ZEOS is also expanding its services to 10 additional European markets, where NEXT is already trading.

In 2024, Zalando also progressed on its near-term 2025 targets by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in operations by 82% and cutting emission intensity from private labels' products by 48% since 2018. The long-term goal is for net-zero emissions in its own operations and private labels by 2040, and across its entire platform by 2050.

To accelerate its efforts to build the leading fashion and lifestyle e-commerce ecosystem, Zalando in December announced a plan to team up with ABOUT YOU. In B2C, the acquisition will enable Zalando to execute a dual brand strategy, with two distinct and separate experiences to better service customers and partners. In B2B, ABOUT YOU’s SCAYLE unit will perfectly complement the software offering of the ZEOS platform. Following the voluntary public takeover offer and related agreements, Zalando has secured more than 90 percent of ABOUT YOU’s share capital without treasury shares, underlining a strong consent to the deal. Closing is anticipated for summer 2025, with full consolidation following thereafter.

The earnings presentation and annual report 2024 are available on the Zalando Investor Relations website. Zalando will report the results for the first quarter 2025 on 6 May 2025.

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Zalando at a glance

*Definitions are available in the Annual Report 2024           

About Zalando

Founded in Berlin in 2008, Zalando is building the leading pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce around two growth vectors: Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B). In B2C, we offer an inspiring and quality multi-brand shopping experience for fashion and lifestyle products to more than 50 million active customers in 25 markets. In B2B, we are using our logistics infrastructure, software and service capabilities to help brands and retailers run and scale their entire e-commerce business, on or off Zalando. As an ecosystem, Zalando aims to enable positive change for the fashion and lifestyle industry.

Contact

Media inquiries                   
Sarah Syed       
Business & Financial Communications   
presse@zalando.de     

Investor/Analyst inquiries 
Patrick Kofler   
Investor Relations
investor.relations@zalando.de