Zalando Launches Personalized Online Shop in Czech Republic

PRAGUE; JUNE 28, 2018 // Zalando, Europe’s leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle, is now live in the Czech Republic. Following its recent expansion to the Czech Republic and the launch of its localized Czech website, Zalando plans to pursue its growth strategy and roll out its personalized shopping experience in the new market.

The Czech Republic is the first market Zalando is entering in Eastern Europe after Poland in 2012. Together with Ireland, it is the first expansion into new countries since 2013. With the two new markets, Zalando will expand its local reach and open its offering to an additional 15.4 million citizens. Linus Glaser, Director Central Europe at Zalando: “We are excited to introduce Zalando to Czech customers, and look forward to starting this new journey in one of the biggest e-commerce markets in Eastern Europe.”

Innovations in fashion: Personalization in Europe’s biggest wardrobe

Zalando is one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies at scale. The combination of innovative technology and expert fashion industry knowledge has long been Zalando‘s recipe for success. With almost 2,000 international brands on offer, it wants to make the online shopping experience more relevant by leveraging its tech-driven innovations. With about 275,000 products in the Czech online store and more than 23 million active customers across Europe, Zalando strives to give each customer their very own Zalando.

“In the early years of e-commerce, it was all about availability of different products. Now, everybody is able to order whatever they want online. We all know that this huge offer has its downside - you can’t see the forest for the trees. So we made it our priority to tailor our offering to our customers, helping them find the right product. We tasked a multidisciplinary team of 600 employees with developing products that improve the digital experience across every part of the fashion retail journey, from curating our vast item assortment, to providing our customers with localized customer service in their native language”, explains Linus Glaser.

The future is in sizing

Size and fit impact more than wearability; they’re crucial to personal style. Helping customers understand what within Zalando’s huge catalogue might appeal to them is a win for brands, customers, and for the fashion ecosystem as a whole. The first item category with which Zalando was able to help its customers was shoes; leveraging machine learning to predict whether certain shoe models run too big or too small. The recommendations are based on the aggregate of Zalando’s customer data paired with feedback from a team of fitting models.

Zalando in numbers

In 2017, Zalando grew revenues by more than 23.4 percent to around 4.5 billion euros. Zalando´s more than 23 million active customers have made more than 90.5 million orders. The company employs more than 15,000 people; 6,000 of them located in Berlin. The company plans to employ 2,000 more in 2018, and expects to outpace the European online fashion market by growing revenues 20-25 percent in 2018.