Happy Birthday, Zalando Logistics!

Logistics is as much a part of Zalando’s DNA as fashion and technology. It’s the employees at Zalando logistics who ensure that our approximately 51 million customers receive their parcels quickly and reliably every day. Zalando has a European logistics network, including twelve sites in seven countries, which focus mainly on processing customer orders. Three of the logistics centers are located in Germany, in the cities of Erfurt, Mönchengladbach and Lahr. They were each officially opened on the same date, August 1st, and celebrate their birthdays together each year. Erfurt is our oldest location and turning eleven years old, followed by Mönchengladbach, which celebrates its 10th birthday this year. Our Zalando location in Lahr in the Black Forest is currently the youngest of our German sites and is seven years old.

Employee since the very beginning

"It became clear to me: we’re building a huge site in Mönchengladbach," says Jens Karnstädt, who started in 2013 as one of the first 85 employees at the logistics center in North Rhine-Westphalia. "I knew this was my chance to hit the ground running." And so Jens, then a team leader, helped to build the first office desks. He literally saw sparks flying during the construction of the steel shelves in the picking warehouse, where he stuck the first barcodes and got to know the new colleagues. Since then, he has become Operations Manager and is responsible for more than 80 employees.
What began in 2008 with shelves in a Berlin shared flat, now covers a logistics area of more than one million square meters throughout Europe. Our conveyor technology in Erfurt, Mönchengladbach, and Lahr alone measures around 400 kilometers all together. This includes all the conveyor belts and machinery that transport goods and packages through the logistics centers.
 

The route a fashion article takes

From order to delivery, articles pass through several departments in one of the logistics centers until they can be shipped to the customers: First, the employees receive the delivered goods on pallets in the goods receiving department and take them to the so-called Receive. There, each product is given its own Zalando barcode, with which it can be clearly assigned. From there, the items are transported in orange boxes to the area where they are stored. So-called fast-moving items are transported through the logistics center via the bag sorter, where they are stored directly in the bags. Fast-moving items are items with a higher turnover rate. When a customer places an order, the items are taken from the shelves or bags, collected and transported to the sorting or packing area, where the products are assigned to the individual orders and packed for shipping. Then, the finished packages travel to the shipping area where they are prepared for transport.

A look behind the scenes

Our German logistics centers regularly take part in events to show interested parties around the 130,000 sqm of a logistics center.
"This spring, together with our colleagues from Erfurt and Lahr, we were finally able to open our doors again to students, local partners and potential applicants after the pandemic-related break," says a delighted Sarah Schmitz, Team Assistant and organizer of the "Supply Chain Day" at the Mönchengladbach warehouse. "We like to offer visitors the opportunity to look behind the scenes and explain to them where their packages actually come from."
On April 18th, 2024, our German sites will again take part in the Supply Chain Day. Further information can be found here.