Online fashion giant Zalando has increased group revenue by 35 per cent to 501m euro for the first quarter of 2013.
The German firm said it would not break even this year despite an improvement in year-on-year group EBIT margin.
Rubin Ritter, member of the Zalando management board said the company was “on track.” He said: “The improvement in the first quarter underlines our plan to take a significant step towards, but not quite reaching, EBIT breakeven at group level for the full year 2014.”
Zalando‘s, whose main rival is Britain‘s Asos, is reportedly planning Europe‘s largest internal float this summer. The company is also facing stiff competition from H&M and Inditex owned Zara who are investing heavily into their e-commerce offerings.
Berlin-based Zalando was founded in 2008 as an online shoe store and now a wide range of goods to 15 countries and boasted 332m total website visits in Q1 2014. It said higher fulfilment productivity, increased marketing efficiency and a good start into the spring/summer season drove the improvement.
Zalando won a summary procedure against Germany TV station RTL this week after an undercover reporter claimed workers in one of its logistics centres had to walk as much as 27km in a single shift. But the firm won as a judge ruled that several parts of the report were not true and decided the report can no longer be broadcast. Zalando said it had dealt with several items brought up in the report and would improve working conditions in the Erfurt logistics centre.
