Following today’s release of Zalando’s figures for the three months ending 30 June 2025; Pippa Stephens, aenior apparel analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view: “Zalando continued to outperform the wider apparel market in Q2 FY2025, with revenue rising 7.3% to €2.8bn, representing only a marginal deceleration on the prior quarter when it grew 7.9%. This is driven by its strong selection of brands, making it more desirable than competitors like ASOS, alongside its technological expertise, helping it to keep gaining new B2B partners. The retailer’s purchase of online pureplay ABOUT YOU completed last month, with it now owning 91.45% of its share capital. This will allow it to increase its hold of the European online apparel market, after facing increased competition from About You over the past few years, with both serving similar regions and demographics, as well as offering a comparable selection of third-party brands. It has now increased its guidance for the full year to include this acquisition, with revenue expected to rise between 4% and 7% on a pro rata basis (assuming ABOUT YOU was part of the group in the prior year) to reach between €12.1bn and €12.4bn. After seeing adjusted EBIT rise 8.1% to €185.5m in Q2, it now expects this to reach between €550m and €600m in FY2025 including ABOUT YOU.
“As the group’s biggest segment, B2C remained strong, with revenue rising 6.8% to €2.6bn, and active users increasing 6.2% to 52.9 million. This was helped by its ongoing focus on offering more premium and luxury brands, allowing it to capture a more financially secure customer base. Zalando also registered outperformances in its Lounge segment, with this outlet destination appealing to shoppers with lower discretionary incomes amid tough economic times, as well as its beauty offering, with this sector remaining resilient due to consumers prioritising self-care and trading up to more premium products. Alongside launching its loyalty programme in 4 additional markets, bringing the total to 17, the retailer is also launching a new AI-powered discovery feed on its app this week. Zalando is already considered a frontrunner in the apparel industry for its use of AI to improve shopping experiences, and with this feature including curated lifestyle boards, personalised recommendations, livestream shopping, and editorial content, it should further aid customer engagement and encourage return visits. “Brick-and-mortar retail sales declined by 3.7%, while wholesale brick-and-mortar grew by a modest 0.4%, highlighting the group’s difficulty in in attracting consumers to its own stores. Increased investment in experiential retail features could help reverse this trend by driving footfall and reinforcing its brand identity. The group’s digital sales grew 5.3%, However, Hugo Boss’ online penetration was still only 19.9%, so the group would benefit from continued investment into enhancing its online offering as the channel remains a rare bright spot in an otherwise sluggish apparel market.
“Zalando’s B2B segment is also going from strength to strength, growing 12.2% to €262.4m in Q2, as it continues to onboard new customers to its ZEOS operating system for their e-commerce needs. A major development is its partnership with Next to fulfil the latter’s orders in Germany, expanding this to its webshop and additional European marketplaces in the second half of the year. Working with such a notable player will help to raise awareness of its services and hopefully bring in more business in the future. It has also recently launched its Shopify application, providing its ZEOS multi-channel fulfilment to Shopify’s European merchant base, giving them faster onboarding, reduced operational complexity, and cost savings, while its enhanced collaboration with ABOUT YOU’s SCAYLE service should further bolster perceptions of its fulfilment capabilities.”
