Zalando is growing at 47 percent

Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, is raising its forecast after strong growth at the start of the year. By the end of the year, eight more countries will be supplied with goods.

Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, is raising its forecast after strong growth at the start of the year. “In the first quarter of 2021, Zalando achieved its strongest growth so far since the IPO in 2014,” Chief Financial Officer David Schroeder said Thursday.

The company, which now has 41.8 million customers, is confident of that. For the whole year, sales are now expected to increase by 26-31 percent, to 10.1 to 10.5 billion euros. So far, Zalando has promised a maximum of 10.3 billion euros. The EBIT is now expected to rise to € 400 to € 475 million. So far, a ceiling of 425 million euros has been forecast.

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Similar to competitors like AboutYou from Hamburg and Asos and Boohoo from Great Britain, Zalando is taking advantage of the fact that more and more people are buying their clothes online during the lockdown. In addition, it is increasingly paying off that the number one in Europe is establishing itself more strongly as a platform provider through which other retailers, fashion brands or established stores can sell their goods and pay commissions to Zalando for them as well as for logistics.

Expanding to eight other countries

From January to March, sales increased by 46.8 per cent to 2.2 billion euros, thus in line with preliminary figures published in April. The revised operating result came to 93.3 million euros after losing nearly 100 million euros in the same period of the previous year. The low rate of return also contributed to this.

Further growth should result from expansion into eight new countries. Zalando wants to expand its business to Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia this year. In order to handle this, the existing logistics network will be expanded to 15 of the current ten. The fashion retailer, which now also sells used fashion and cosmetics, currently has around 14,000 employees in 17 countries.