Zalando focused on simplifying customer experience to the max

By

Christel Divert

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Sep 5, 2018

At the Bread && Butter B2C show in Berlin last weekend, the event’s owner and Europe’s number one fashion e-tailer Zalando talked about its strategies and upcoming projects. While a hybrid event like Bread && Butter is targeted at a relatively niche audience, Zalando is constantly keeping track of all its market segments to continue growing its business.

“We are a fashion website focused on our customers’ expectations. We want to offer a wide selection of brands, products and colours across our entire apparel range. Footwear is of course easier to sell online. The customer’s experience must be as straightforward as possible, more so than in a physical store, and increasingly personalised given the breadth of our product range,” said Delphine Mousseau, Vice-President Markets at Zalando.

Currently, women make up 65% of Zalando’s customers, and men the remaining 35%. The age of women customers is roughly between 17 and over 70, though the core demographic is between 25 and 40. Germany is still the site’s largest market, followed by Switzerland, Austria, northern Europe and Benelux. “France is growing well. We are active in Italy, but consumers aren’t very keen to buy online in that country. Spain is dominated by fast-fashion chains, though El Corte Inglès is gradually making up lost ground. As for the UK, it’s a market we entered too late, and it isn’t a priority at the moment,” said Delphine Mousseau.

Zalando is teaming up more and more frequently with brick-and-mortar fashion retailers, so as not to miss out on the fast-fashion boom. For some weeks, Zalando’s French site has been featuring products by Massimo Dutti and Oysho, two brands belonging to the Inditex group, and negotiations are under way with other chains.

Autumn promises to be a busy period for Zalando. The e-tailer will deploy its one-day delivery service across the whole of France for the majority of its articles. It will support the launch with a TV ad campaign designed to be “very pragmatic, explaining all the services that will make our customers’ life easy.” The campaign's content will be a first for Zalando, which usually prefers to advertise its fashion identity.

Last March, Zalando extended its range in Germany to include beauty products, and a men’s grooming range will be introduced in the autumn. If the test phase in Germany will be successful, beauty will be launched in all the other Zalando markets. In the second quarter, the average purchase basket on Zalando was worth €60.40, down €4.10 compared to the same period in 2017. This was due to the rising number of mobile transactions, the majority of them impulse purchases, usually less costly. However, Zalando has 24 million customers and, on the strength of this base, the e-tailer’s management is upbeat, the mood helped also by the good cheer and energy of its new Berlin showcase, the Bread && Butter show.