// Zalando posts strong full-year sales and profit growth fuelled by a rapidly expanding customer base and membership scheme
// In 2021, Zalando gained more than 10 million new customers and significantly expanded its reach to now serve more than 48 million active customers across 23 market
German online fashion retailer Zalando has said it expects sales growth to slow in 2022 after the coronavirus pandemic helped it record a bumper year in 2021, when sales jumped almost 30%.
However in 2021, the retailer reported an increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) of 34.1% to £11.9 billion, driven by continued strong consumer demand and growth in partner adoption of its platform services.
Revenue grew by 29.7% to £8.7 billion and achieved an adjusted EBIT of £391 million.
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The online giant said it has ambitions to reach more than £25 billion in GMV by 2025 and said it was “well on track” to achieve this.
Zalando said that it grew “significantly faster than expected” during its financial year driven by “continued strong consumer demand for online offerings.”
The Berlin-based fashion etailer gained more than 10 million new customers during the financial year, driving its active customers base to more than 48 million across 23 markets. Each active customer made an average of 5.2 orders over the year.
Zalando’s membership programme Zalando Plus surpassed more than one million members in early 2022 and after expanding the programme to the Netherlands, France and Italy in 2021, it will double the number of markets Plus is available in by the end of 2023 from four markets currently.
Zalando co-chief executive Robert Gentz said: “We are very pleased with our strong results, which demonstrate that we have the right strategy in place to succeed irrespective of the market environment.
“Our new customer growth and strategic progress in 2021 underline the immense opportunity ahead of us. Leveraging our platform business model, we are in a strong position to achieve our GMV goal of more than 30 billion euros by 2025. We would like to thank the entire Zalando team for their commitment and flawless execution working towards that goal.”
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