Our commitment: By 2025, we will ensure equity in policies and practices (hiring, promotion, development) by conducting audits to proactively identify and eliminate biases and systemic barriers.²
 
This year, we launched our first company-wide D&I survey, which was voluntary and anonymous and had an immediate impact: helping us better understand our employees’ needs and experiences of inclusion. Based on these results, we redesigned parts of our approach and initiatives and redirected some financial resources to better serve our communities. In addition, through our Diversity and Inclusion Action plans, we will work with our leaders to implement our initiatives and make teams more inclusive across our business units.

This year, we invested in improvements to many of our facilities. We installed fully accessible and all-gender bathrooms on every floor of the 10 buildings on our Berlin campus. And we plan to add more at other Zalando locations, ensuring all employees have easy access to facilities they feel comfortable using. Also in Berlin, we upgraded our prayer rooms, working with our Employee Resource Groups (ERG), including the Muslim Community Network, to identify the best way to meet our employees’ needs.

Our D&I Dialogues are company-wide sessions designed to help employees engage with and learn about Diversity & Inclusion. To date, we have held five sessions led by external D&I experts. We were delighted to see that thousands of employees tuned in to each. D&I Dialogues topics this year included the importance of inclusion, allyship for leaders, and inclusive leadership for businesses. At the most recent event, we invited Karim Mustaghni, founder of Culturedesign.org, and Allie Bangura, founder of our long-term partner ADAN, to explore human-centric cultures based on trust.
 
We continue to build our partnership with Afro German Academic Network (ADAN). The Zalando x ADAN program has enabled 13 young Black people to start and advance their careers at Zalando, accompanied by mentors from across the business. Together, we have also worked to build awareness of Zalando in the Berlin BPOC community. Our initiatives have included sharing job openings and inviting members of the Black Employee Connection ERG to speak at events such as the Afrobeats Festival. The Impact of Diversity Award nominated our partnership with ADAN in the category “Internationality,” which honors businesses striving for greater workforce diversity.

One of our ongoing focuses is making sure that our employees can take parental leave with confidence. We offer guidance and training so that our leaders can support employees on their return to work. Our People Team, together with online resources, help our leaders to facilitate offboarding and reboarding, manage the process, and keep relevant dates in mind. Our Family Friendliness team provides guidance to those who have questions or concerns about family or work-family balance. We also focus on how to prepare for absence associated with caregiving activities and how to return as seamlessly as possible.

We strive to support our employees’ health and wellbeing. Our Company Integration Management Team provides coaching to anyone who has been absent on long-term sick leave, so employees can take the time they need and are onboarded thoughtfully once they return. Our Employee Assistance Service facilitates counseling for personal and work-related issues and has implemented an Employee Assistance Program that refers people to specialist medical support and psychotherapy. This year, we partnered with Gympass, a fitness and wellbeing platform that offers affordable therapy in multiple languages. The sessions are led by licensed therapists from a range of backgrounds. Gympass also offers community-based and on-site fitness options and access to wellbeing apps.

At Zalando Group, the average gender wage gap between women and men with the same job and location was 0.9% this year, compared with 1.3% in 2021. With no adjustment for roles and locations the gap was 12.5%, compared with 13.5% in 2021. At Zalando SE³, the average gender wage gap between women and men with the same job and location was 0.5% this year, compared with 1.3% in 2021⁴. With no adjustment for roles and locations, it was 21.4%, compared with 23.6% in 2021. The narrower gap at the group level is driven by a sizable operational workforce. This tends to close the gap, because fulfillment center employees are, for example, on a more heterogeneous grading structure and subject to tighter salary bands. Meanwhile, Zalando SE employs more men than women in senior positions and tech jobs, which receive higher compensation on average. We continue to work on closing the gender pay gap through several Women in Leadership initiatives (see commitment 7) and dedicated projects such as our reskilling program for women (see commitment 3).

For comparison, the unadjusted gender wage gap in Germany’s private sector was 20% in 2021, with significant variations across sectors. For example, transportation & storage averaged 6%, wholesale and retail trade averaged 20%, information and communication averaged 23%, and professional, scientific & technical averaged 27%.⁴

Although in the past we have used the internationally-recognized log-linear least squares approach for gender wage gap analysis⁵, in 2022 we realized that past Zalando D&I reports underestimated the true gap. Therefore, we switched our methodology to a Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood estimator to calculate current and past wage gaps.

This year, we were ranked fifth in Germany by the German Diversity Index, which measures the diversity commitment of Dax-40 companies by applying uniform criteria on the basis of annual and sustainability reports.

² Equity refers to the act of ensuring that processes and programs are impartial, fair and provide equal possible outcomes for every individual.

³ Zalando Group workforce without fulfillment center employees

⁴ In our D&I report 2022, the Gender Wage Gap data for 2021 were falsely reported on. We have retroactively corrected this data in this current report. For transparency:
- False adjusted wage gap 2021: 1.4% ; corrected adjusted wage gap 2021: 1.3%
- False unadjusted wage gap 2021: 12.6%; corrected unadjusted wage gap 2021: 13.5%

⁵ Statistisches Bundesamt (September 15th, 2022)

⁶ The common practice in the applied empirical literature is to estimate a log-linear least squares regression on a gender dummy variable and a set of controls that are important for pay formation in order to compare similar men and women with respect to these characteristics.

D&I at fulfillment centers

As part of our do.BETTER strategy, we are working toward meeting the needs of our fulfillment center employees⁷. This year we focused on learning and enablement opportunities. D&I representatives in our Customer Fulfillment team hosted monthly “D&I Supporter Calls.” These covered topics including unconscious bias and allyship and provided updates on D&I initiatives across Zalando. The calls gave employees an opportunity to connect with D&I initiatives at the group level and involve themselves in projects.

In another initiative, we used screens and posters to boost awareness of D&I topics such as company values and our Code of Ethics. We organized enablement sessions and put educational materials in break rooms, so that all employees are aware of our anti-discrimination policies and processes.

In every fulfillment center, our employees elect designated representatives for disabled employees⁸. In addition, this year, we launched new initiatives for deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, for example, focusing on career opportunities. To support safety at work, employees were equipped with vibrating devices that alert them in case of emergency. Finally, professional sign language interpreters visited regularly to further improve on-site communication. They will continue to do so in the year ahead.

⁷ Zalando German fulfillment centers are located in Ludwigsfelde, Lahr, Mönchengladbach, and Erfurt

⁸ At Zalando we intentionally choose to use "disability-first" language when referring to the disabled community, after collaboration with disability-led consultancy All is for All and extensive customer research. We acknowledge that "people-first" language is also commonly used.

Our commitment: By 2025, employees who self-identify as having a disability feel included and supported as measured by the Zalando Inclusion Index.

Disability inclusion at Zalando means creating an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. Over the past year, we are pleased to have made progress in creating spaces that are more welcoming to everyone.

Our Real Estate Development team is committed to making our buildings more accessible — as seen in the design of the new BHS and BHW highrises on our Berlin campus. In both buildings, inclusion and accessibility have been considered from the start. For example, common working areas were designed to be barrier free. In all our new buildings, there are accessible toilets on every floor, mechanically operated or easy-to-use doors, and step-free circulation areas. Across our German workplaces, we are rolling out signage with improved legibility and contrast. This also extends to other European sites, including Dublin and Zurich, where our Technology and Size & Fit teams have recently moved into fully accessible buildings.

To support disabled employees, our Disability Inclusion Officer provides on-demand enablement for team leads. They also offer counseling sessions for employees who need help or information. We have established a Mobile Works Agreement, which enables severely disabled employees to permanently work remotely if they choose. And our external employee assistant program through the Fürstenberg Institute offers targeted support on how to apply for severe disability status under German law.

"Through my work, I'm able to have a positive impact on the lives of disabled employees at Zalando through on-demand enablement and empowering team leads to be better allies. We will continue to drive this work with increased buy-in from leadership and engagement with key stakeholders to improve the experiences of disabled employees across Zalando," says Kazi Bruelke, Disability Inclusion Officer.

Our commitment: By 2023, we will increase the share of women in tech job families to 40% and 60%.⁹

As of August 2022, women made up 24.8% of roles across Zalando technical job families, a 3.6 percentage point increase from last year.

A key enabler of our progress on gender diversity has been a significant increase in our headcount. This has given us the opportunity to make inclusive hiring decisions while growing our tech teams. We have doubled the share of women in tech roles over the past five years.

We set ourselves an ambitious target, one that we knew would be difficult to achieve, even without the uncertain economic conditions we find ourselves in. We have 1 year left to fulfill this commitment, but we see that recruitment continues to be a challenge. However, we are making retention a priority and are focused on hiring inclusively for our open roles. In addition, we are continuing to improve our hiring process, reviewing gender breakdown at each phase of the pipeline to create more equal opportunities. We identify women candidates applying for tech roles and add them to a dedicated candidate pool. Additionally, the talent acquisition team has reviewed job descriptions across the board, using inclusive language that aims to speak to all.

We are proud of our Women in Tech Reskilling Program. This focuses on enabling employees who identify as women to take up entry-level software engineering roles. In April 2022, Zalando launched a software engineering pilot in which 20 candidates decided they would like to shift their careers into the world of software engineering. They were interviewed and offered new roles, before starting a 3-6 month full-time course. Next year, to build on the successful pilot, we will continue to work with our partner StartSteps, which helps people identify and learn about career paths in tech.

Our colleague Flora Ohlsen, Community Manager & Assistant in Partner Services, says: “I have always pictured myself in tech, but years spent as a stay-at-home mother made it too much of a stretch on my time and finances. Two years ago, I plucked up the courage to enroll in an online programming course, but again, juggling a full-time job [at Zalando] and family proved too much. In February this year, I came across the program at Zalando's [internal] career fair week and saw how much thought and care has been put into the program. I knew I had to apply! The question that has challenged me over the years was not why to start a career in tech but rather how to do so? This was answered in the career orientation part of the program, delivered by StartSteps.”

This year, we partnered with Girls Talk London, an award-winning social enterprise that aims to remove barriers to women in sectors where they are traditionally underrepresented.¹⁰ The enterprise works to showcase promising jobs and opportunities, including for women from marginalized communities. As part of the partnership, we aim to connect Black women working in tech in Germany with each other and with BPOC women working in tech at Zalando. In addition this year, we hosted the Black Girls in Tech Berlin conference, welcoming over 170 guests. Participating employees spanned a range of experience and seniority, giving attendees broad insights into their experiences. We also took part in a virtual edition of the event, which had the additional benefit of recruiter sessions and a larger audience.

⁹ We aim to achieve balanced representation of genders, hence remain in a 40-60% corridor.
¹⁰ Underrepresented refers to a person or group of people who are inadequately represented — in this case, within the fashion industry across Europe.

Our commitment: By 2025, all leaders will champion Diversity and Inclusion in the way they lead people and teams.

We have rolled out training in inclusive behavior and inclusive leadership for our top five leadership levels¹¹. The training is designed to equip our leaders to delve deeper into the roles they play in creating inclusive environments. They also explore how leaders can broaden their understanding to engage more effectively in D&I discussions. Leaders have taken part in 11 sessions this year.

Inclusive behavior training helps our leaders understand the importance of D&I and how personal reflection can lead to self-awareness. If our leaders are more aware of their privileges and experiences, they can better understand the challenges others face. The training also addresses the importance of using inclusive language and acknowledging diversity — conveying respect, being sensitive to differences, promoting fairness, and deepening inclusion across Zalando.

Inclusive leadership training is a three-module program that aims to help senior decision makers lead diverse teams. It focuses on inclusive communication, psychological safety, and intercultural competency.

“The inclusive leadership trainings enabled us to deepen the conversation on inclusion, which furthered our understanding of how to act inclusively and improve mutual engagement. I found my personal role shifted from a silent supporter to an activist around D&I, because I was better able to recognize low-inclusion situations and actively intervene," says Roeland Loof, VP Finance Performance Management.

¹¹ Positions include Head, Director, Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Management Board.

Our commitment: From 2022 onwards, we will have Diversity and Inclusion action plans in all business units.

In May 2022, we conducted our first D&I survey — a voluntary and anonymous initiative that helped us gauge lived experiences and how our employees feel about inclusion, fairness, and access to opportunities. We aggregated the results into a dedicated report for each business unit, highlighting areas of success and where work is required to improve the collective experience.

Additionally, we worked with HR analytics consultancy People Insights Ltd to create a D&I Inclusion Index. The index represents opinions on people’s inclusion experience. The average response feeds into the index and creates a critical performance indicator for some of our commitments (primarily talent and leadership), as well as highlighting where we need to make improvements.

Lastly, we are working with our leaders to entrench D&I in our workflows. Our 2022 operational plans already include key D&I initiatives. For 2023, we will embed D&I in all our business unit operational plans.

Our commitment: By 2025, we commit to broaden the representation of visible and invisible diversity dimensions and backgrounds in our senior leadership levels.

Our 11 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are conceived and operated by employees who share identity traits or experiences. The voluntary groups create safer spaces¹² where people come together, share a sense of community, raise issues, and boost awareness in our leadership teams. They enhance the workplace experience for all employees by creating a more respectful and inclusive culture. Our ERG members are also initiators of community projects and act as advisors and sounding boards for new ideas.

¹² The term safe(r) space generally means “a place or environment in which a person or category of people can feel confident that they will not be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any other emotional or physical harm.

Among recent projects, the Mental Wellbeing Community teamed up with the Corporate Health Management Team to create a space for employees to share their feelings and facilitate conversations with those directly or indirectly affected by the war in Ukraine.¹³ The Mental Wellbeing Community organized a regular event called “How are you REALLY feeling?” Through a collaboration with the Corporate Citizenship and D&I teams, ERGs identified organizations supporting Ukrainian refugees. They have partnered with several organizations¹⁴ that enable the evacuation and aftercare of members of the BPOC and LGBTQI+ communities, as well as disabled and chronically ill refugees. In addition, Zalando has donated to organizations that combat human and child trafficking.

Zalando once again celebrated Pride in collaboration with the LGBTQI+ ERG. For Pride 2022, members and allies of the ERG designed, produced, and executed internal and external events to increase awareness on the importance of Pride, allyship, and their community needs. Experts from branding, marketing, communications, and logistics organized a panel with members of the Board to discuss how we can build back better for the LGBTQI+ community. Our senior leaders contributed via a video message, sharing their thoughts on why Pride matters and the importance of visible LGBTQI+ leaders. The LGBTQI+ community also created videos and content pieces to tell our our employees’ stories. ERGs also organized our participation in Berlin CSD 2022.

For International Women’s Day in March, the Women's Network, together with the Women in Tech and Women in Finance ERG, followed the official International Women’s Day hashtag #BreakTheBias. They facilitated 13 sessions in one week, hosting internal events, workshops, and podcasts for all employees. Topics included real estate investing, intersectionality and beauty standards, gender experience and expression, and understanding the menstrual cycle.

In Berlin, Dortmund, Ansbach, Lahr, and Helsinki, the Muslim Community Network celebrated its first community get-together for Iftar¹⁵ and Eid¹⁶. Collaborations between Muslim employees in fulfillment centers and head offices around Europe led to new prayer room designs and long-sleeve uniforms for those that wanted them.

“Being part of Black Employee Connection (BEC) gives me a team outside my team. It is a diverse network of people who share at least parts of my biography and identity. I believe that meaningful change is only as successful as its composition of voices and perspectives. I want to contribute by sharing the concerns of BEC and other historically marginalized groups, as well as using my professional experience to influence decision making,” says Lisanne Dorn, Acting Director of Partner Sales at Zalando Direct, Core-Member of Zalando’s Black Employee Connection.

Looking to the future, we are developing a new ERG strategy that will redefine our ERG program and our strategic focus. The strategy will include new measures around governance, recognition of ERG core members, and collaboration between ERG and the business. It will also establish how we measure success. The effort will help us better support our ERG and guide them to successful partnerships with Zalando.

¹³ The full extent of Zalando’s Ukraine support will be reported in Zalando’s Sustainability Report 2023.

¹⁴  Outright International, Fight for Right, International Office for Migration, ADAN, Voices of Children

¹⁵ Iftar, also known as futoor, is the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset. They break their fast at the time of the call to prayer for the evening prayer.

¹⁶ Eid Al-fiitr is an official holiday celebrated within Islam. The religious holiday is celebrated by Muslims worldwide because it marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan.

Our commitment: By 2023, we will increase the share of women in each of our five¹⁷ top leadership levels to 40-60%.¹⁸

One of the highlights of the past year has been the speed at which we have widened representation in our leadership teams. With an average of 37.5% of top-five leadership level roles occupied by women, we are on the right path to achieving our target for women in leadership. Our progress reflects our conviction about the benefits of gender-equitable leadership.

“It was really about someone in the room saying ‘That’s not good enough’ when women weren’t on a candidate list for leadership positions. We knew the problem wasn’t a lack of talented and qualified women, so we looked to address why they weren’t sitting in front of us as often in interviews. Thankfully, this has resulted in some really valuable hires, which is why we have been able to make so much progress on this commitment,” says Astrid Arndt, Chief People Officer.

This year we also expanded gender representation on our Board. We appointed Dr. Sandra Dembeck as our new Chief Financial Officer, responsible for the Finance and Group Governance teams.

¹⁷ We included the Supervisory Board level in external communication of the goal to achieve a share of 40-60% in each of the top 6 leadership levels. We focus now only on leadership levels within Zalando that we have hiring influence over.

¹⁸ By setting a corridor for this target, we aim to achieve a balanced representation of both women and men, hence a share of 40-60% for both genders.

“I fully believe in the power of diversity as an important driver of a company's growth. At Zalando, we have experienced such rapid development over the past years. I am glad we have taken this as an opportunity to diversify perspectives of our leadership. My motto is to see D&I as crucial to creating a company where people feel valued and being able to offer a product that resonates with customers,” says Sandra Dembeck.

We are continuously improving on our senior leadership hiring processes. Our executive search teams are committed to identifying a diverse pool of candidates and ensuring that candidates have a great experience during their recruitment journey. They also make sure that we have gender representation on our interview panels. We are also committed to promoting from within, making sure that advancement opportunities are visible and possible for women throughout our organization. This year we introduced Grow@Zalando, an internal career development week where we focus on growth topics such as understanding our performance frameworks.

Our commitment: By 2025, we commit to providing an equally accessible, relevant and welcoming digital experience for customers from underrepresented groups and regularly evaluate our digital experience by an independent external panel.

We were proud this year to launch our Adaptive Fashion collections. To create a more inclusive and accessible digital experience, we assembled a dedicated team of software engineers, product designers, product managers, data analysts, and researchers, who are working together to improve our disability proposition.
 
To further understand our disabled customers’ experiences, we conducted in-depth interviews and surveyed more than 1,300 people in the disabled community. One in five consumers has an impairment that implies a need for Adaptive Fashion, with 20% of those pointing out that they don’t know where to shop for Adaptive Fashion. Insights from these interviews have helped us understand how to design a more inclusive digital experience, as well as how to craft our communications around our Adaptive Fashion collections.

We worked with All is For All (AIFA), a consultancy for disability inclusion, which has helped us shape our customer research and messages that are inclusive and authentically represent our disabled customers’ experiences.

“Over the last year and a half, our team of pan-disabled people have worked across all touch points of Zalando’s Adaptive Fashion launch to ensure best practice, authenticity, and connectivity with our community. A disability rights approach¹⁹ has informed, meaningfully, every single piece of work. This is a continuing journey, but we are thrilled to be part of this and are very proud of what was produced,” says Grace Stratton, Director and Founder of AIFA.

We have prioritized making customers’ digital experiences accessible on app and online. As a first step, we improved our corporate website’s accessibility, offering better readability, easier navigation, and a more intuitive layout. In parallel, we asked external experts to audit our customer digital experience against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The results have encouraged us to start work to enable disabled customers to find, choose, and purchase products more easily, as well as to ensure we make accessibility a permanent capability. As part of the initiative, we offer enablement and accessibility training to software engineers, designers, and product managers across our Digital Experience teams.

By listening to disabled customers and co-creating experiences with experts in the disability community, Zalando will continue to celebrate disability, connect customers with brands, and boost accessibility with cutting-edge assistive technology.

We continue our efforts on size inclusion, with our Size Advice and Body Measurements team taking part in additional training.

"With this training, we wanted to grow awareness of how our customers feel about seeing their bodies in the digital space and, consequently, of ways to integrate the demands of inclusive design into our way of working. It was a discovery exercise where we discussed diversity, inclusion, body privilege, and retail micro aggressions, as we worked on eliminating non-inclusive language and enabling technical solutions. Developing an inclusive experience is an 'always on' task. This is why we keep working and researching to overcome any technical constraints to reach our goal and make sure that all our customers feel both represented and included," says Stacia Carr, VP Size and Fit.

¹⁹ What Can We Learn From a Human-Rights Based Approach to Disability for Public and Patient Involvement in Research?

Our commitment: By 2023, our customer experience and communications reflect and celebrate diversity through our visuals, language, and narratives — we also encourage and support our partners to do the same.

Zalando recognizes its responsibility to create authentic, representative, and inclusive content. That includes marketing campaigns, media partnerships, and events. Our photographers, stylists, and creatives have analyzed where we can do better and put inclusion at the center of our creative processes.

Our initiatives this year included collaborations with photographers and influencers to deliver monthly bite-size content on beauty (@and.bloom) and styling (Ways to style), as well as expanded campaigns for Zalando’s Fashion Store and our brand partners. For our Holiday 2021 campaign “Joy Is Ours”, we cast models and influencers from 23 European nations, showcasing diversity including gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age.

In our Adaptive Fashion campaign “Embrace what makes you, you”, we continued to craft our messaging to be inclusive by design. To represent leading voices from the disabled community, we are proud to have collaborated with AIFA and photographer Debra Brune. Both AIFA members and Debra have lived experience of disability. Our storytelling leads with a diverse mix of disabled talent and interviews them on what fashion means to them. We also offer a dedicated online destination for our customers to explore our Adaptive assortment, focusing on fashion first, functionality second.

We are committed to celebrating and amplifying communities at moments in the year that resonate with them. Our 2022 Pride campaign highlighted voices from the LGBTQI+ community; nine creators spoke about the role of fashion and beauty in expressing identity and pride. Our Pride campaign was accompanied by the launch of our permanent Pride landing page, a dedicated space on the Fashion Store where customers can look for inspiration.

This year, we launched our global Zalando Beauty campaign showcasing the diversity of Beauty and Care enthusiasts. To amplify our commitment to inclusive beauty, we partnered with “Kweer Ball”, a dance party series “inspired by queer ballroom culture.” Through a media partnership with akut magazine, Zalando documented the beauty transformation of talents Ivy Monterio and Bran Dee for the "Kweer Ball" in April. Ivy and Bran Dee became their favorite superhero characters using products available in Zalando’s beauty assortment.

"Being non-binary and gender fluid is very relative, but for me it means moving and performing sometimes as a man, sometimes as a woman, and sometimes as something in between. That's where makeup helps me tremendously to express myself the way I feel and to be the person I want to be that day," says Ivy Monterio in akut magazine.

In 2022, Zalando Marketing Services partnered with the US- American fashion brand GAP to create Sharing Pride. This campaign supported three LGBTQIA+ film directors in Germany — Adam Munnings, Zoey Lee, and Harun Güler — to create their own short films responding to GAP's core message: “The freedom to be yourself is the most profound sense of joy.” The partnership enabled each director to create their own interpretation of this core message. The films navigate culture, identity, and gender while embodying the belief that liberation and happiness come when you live your truth.

Our marketing teams this year took part in a knowledge-sharing D&I Fashion Series. The participants engaged in three discussions, starting with Representation in Fashion, which focused on the importance of representative images and the consequences of stereotypes. The second session, Cultural Appropriation in Design, discussed cultural appropriation in products and how to recognize and avoid it. The final session, Celebrating Diversity, highlighted the importance of ethical communication and widening representation in marketing. Through discussions and analysis, participants set goals for incorporating D&I ambitions into their business activities.

"The session was informative and engaging and highlighted our need for more solid guidelines around D&I when creating campaigns. Consequently, I’ve joined the Representative Content Working Group on behalf of our team. We strive to represent society and champion diversity in the campaigns we pitch to external brands,” says Isabelle Jordy, Senior Creative, Fashion Store.

Our commitment: By 2025, we commit to offer a truly diverse assortment for underrepresented groups by providing product choices and thoughtful experiences in every category across price, size, and style.²¹

In October 2022, we launched Adaptive Fashion collections with Tommy Hilfiger, and Adaptive shoes by Nike — both key moments in our inclusion journey. We designed Adaptive collections for five of our private label brands: Anna Field, Even & Odd, Zign, Pier One, and YOURTURN. And we are working with a host of partner brands to help them roll out Adaptive collections on Zalando.

Our starting point in launching our Adaptive Fashion collections was ensuring that our employees had an opportunity to learn about and understand the disabled community and their fashion inspirations. We conducted workshops to train people in design, marketing, and communications, helping them get a better idea of disabled individuals’ needs.

New assortments on our platform include items for people who need to sit while getting dressed and fabric that is comfortable to those that are sensitive to touch. The collection includes more accessible clothing features, such as zippers that can be fastened with one hand, magnetic closures, and easy-to-use buttons.

To make our assortment even more inclusive, we expanded our Modest Fashion offerings. We built a Modest Fashion²² landing page, making it easier for our customers to find products and providing a one-stop shop for inspiration. Since July 2021, our work with modest brands, including Modanisa and Touche Prive, has given customers interested in Modest Fashion more options. Our new style inspiration and dedicated Get the Look content is live on the Fashion Store, with influencers such as Aminia Belal highlighting their favorite pieces on the site. Content creators on YouTube also talk about our Modest Fashion collections: see Ways to Style Modestwear with Beza. 

²¹ Underrepresented refers to a person or group of people who are inadequately represented — in this specific case, within the fashion industry across Europe.

²² Modest Fashion is designed for people who want their clothes to align with religious or personal preferences.

This summer, we launched “Limitless Fashion”, a capsule collection of 32 pieces of Genderless Fashion ranging from outerwear and knitwear to crop tops, shorts, blazers, and dresses, available exclusively at Zalando. The collection showcases four Nordic labels: Han Kjøbenhavn, Martin Asbjørn, Makia, and Double A by Wood Wood.

The collection and the campaign were very well received. Both created high engagement with customers and were picked up and talked about by local media.

“We’ve seen a growing demand for gender-free clothing and we want to continue to inspire our customers, as well as support local brands. Our “Limitless Fashion” campaign did just that and sparked conversations about what gender-free looks today in the media and on social platforms,” says Joanna Hummel, General Manager for Zalando’s Nordic markets.

Inclusive Beauty

In 2018, we launched our D&I beauty proposition. We aim to onboard brands and products that meet consumers’ individual needs. The Zalando wholesale assortment has grown to 11 brands across haircare, skincare, and makeup that cater to BPOC skin tones and hair texture. They include Fenty Beauty, Danessa Myricks, Dizziak, and Atina Cosmetic.

Our buying team works closely with our partners to widen our assortment of foundation shades. Currently we offer more than 800 across our top 11 beauty brands. A leading brand on the platform is MAC Make up with 56+ foundation shades on our platform.

Our inclusive assortment has expanded by 60% over the past three years, and we encourage onboarded brands to launch with a wide range of shades. We have also welcomed several new brands that specifically focus on underrepresented groups. Since October 2021, we have partnered in Germany with Sephora, which offers a wide range of shades for deeper skin tones. In our professional haircare category, we focused on highlighting products for different hair types. We highlighted a new assortment of brands, including L’Oreal Professionnel, Aveda, and Kérastase, which have launched new hair products to cater to a diversity of hair textures, thicknesses, and colors. We implemented a Haircare finder with Kérastase. We also onboarded brands that cater specifically to curlier hair types, including Dizziak and Bouclème.

Looking ahead, we plan to add more inclusive brands catering to a diversity of hair textures, skin shades, and skin types, as well as all-gender beauty products for mature skin.

Our commitment: By 2025, we will be the European e-commerce partner of choice for brands and retailers that serve or stem from underrepresented groups.

Mirroring the “Fifteen Percent Pledge”²³ initiated by Black designer Aurora James after the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, we have set ourselves the target of onboarding more Black-owned brands to the Zalando Fashion Store. This year, we onboarded 63 Black-owned brands across beauty, jewelry, and fashion.

In addition to major brands such as Karl Kani, our buyers and sales teams have set out to identify smaller brands from around the world. They have offered advice throughout the onboarding process and helped to boost brand visibility with marketing credits for our in-house agency ZMS.

²³ This initiative challenges US companies to dedicate 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned Brands, a number derived from the 15% Black citizens of the USA.

For Black History Month in February, we published interviews with three Black-owned brands. Rene Macdonald, founder and creative director of Lisou, Thebe Magugu, creator of the luxury South African fashion brand of the same name, and Milki Abadura, digital marketing manager at Dechase, provided insights into their inspirations and business journeys.

“We have been with Zalando for a few seasons now and they have really helped us gain a presence in Europe. Additionally, the team has been great at supporting us with onboarding, product testing, and so on. For a small independent brand, this has been invaluable. We look forward to a growing relationship over future seasons,” says Rene Macdonald, Founder and Creative Director of Lisou.

“Our objective is to empower Black-owned brands by embracing them as partners, supporting them to become successful, amplifying their voices, and driving business for them,” says Jemma Garner, Principal Business Developer.

We will continue to support brands that serve or stem from underrepresented groups, taking into account their goals, the implications of intersectionality, and our customers' needs.

Our commitment: By 2025, we will be a central collaboration point in fashion, bringing together brands, retailers, NGOs, academia, community thought-leaders, and members of the media to systematically empower and amplify underrepresented voices in the industry.

Our partnership commitment aims to empower underrepresented groups and facilitate collaboration with NGOs and academic institutions. We learn from our partners’ experiences and gather ideas that could help us be welcoming to everyone. This year, we continued to develop our relationships and welcomed several new partners.

In November 2021, we held our first D&I Forum at Zalando headquarters in Berlin. D&I and industry professionals came together to exchange ideas and learn. This year, we expanded the concept by launching D&I Roundtables, bringing together brand partners and D&I professionals from the broader tech industry, aiming to develop best practice on D&I topics. This November, we will host our first roundtable on “How to embed D&I in your organization.” More than 70 D&I leaders and professionals from Berlin tech companies will come together to share knowledge and exchange ideas.

Zalando partners with The Outsider's Perspective, a social enterprise that combats low representation of BPOC on the operational side of fashion. The focus of the project is to equip BPOC talent with the knowledge and skills needed to work in marketing, merchandising, finance, human resources, and/or digital and to introduce them to fashion brands. We believe this is an important step in encouraging diversity in fashion, increasing representation, and engaging the next generation of consumers.

"Our consumers are so international and diverse. If you are not reflecting that in your teams, how are you speaking to them? This is key for Gen Z for buying into authentic brands," says Jamie Gill, Founder, The Outsider’s Perspective.

Zalando will partner with Special Olympics, the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.²⁴ In 2023, we are proud that we will be a partner for the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin. We will run several projects to highlight the importance of disability inclusion in sport and fashion. One of the projects we kicked off this year is a collaboration with the Lette Verein fashion college to launch a course on Adaptive Fashion design. This autumn, students are creating items for athletes and receiving lessons from Zalando designers and buyers on how to produce commercial garments. Athletes from the German Special Olympics team will act as models and consultants.

For the past two years, we have been a member of Valuable 500, an organization that challenges global corporations to make disability inclusion a business priority. The key focus in our partnership is to support work on representation. The partnership has enabled Valuable 500 to conduct qualitative and quantitative research into representation among member companies. This has led to the creation of a media hub that will support companies in accurately and authentically portraying disabled people. The hub will provide stock imagery, music, and a directory of models, photographers, and creative directors.

²⁴ Persons that have certain limitations in cognitive functioning and skills, including communication, social, and self-care skills (SOD)

“Throughout this time, Zalando has provided support and guidance, helping us shape our understanding and plans. It has been active in connecting with our directory partners and disability business experts in areas such as Adaptive wear and inclusive casting/model booking, as well as with companies in the Valuable 500 to learn about best practice in other sectors and geographies,” says Chloe Matharu, Chief Marketing Officer at Valuable 500.

Partnerships help us connect with diverse communities. Zalando recognizes that in times of crisis and war, marginalized groups, such as disabled people, BPOC, and LGBTQI+ community members, face heightened risks. Since the beginning of 2022, we have worked with charities and crisis response teams in Ukraine to support marginalized groups such as BPOC and the LGBTQI+ community. Our partners also help people who have struggled to flee Ukraine due to age, disability, or lack of passports, as well as supporting women and unaccompanied minors. We have financially supported organizations including Outright International, Fight for Right, International Office for Migration, ADAN, and Voices of Children.

With quick funding, these organizations were able to respond during the early months of the war and help get people to safety, as well as provide initial support in other countries. In collaboration with our Corporate Citizenship team, we are supporting organizations (for example, Ashoka) that drive policy and design solutions for the inclusion and better treatment of refugees fleeing from Ukraine and through other migration corridors such as the Mediterranean Sea.

Last but not least, we collaborated with Shimmy Technologies and Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) to empower women working at Zalando partner facilities in Bangladesh (producing garments for our private labels). The training gave 800 employees the opportunity to develop skills to adapt to a changing workplace and advance their careers. Topics included reducing gender bias among senior managers, as well as the positive impact of more women in leadership and the economic advantages of equal-opportunity workplaces. Following the training, we saw the first promotion of a woman to a management position in our Bangladeshi partner facility. In all of our locations, we work to ensure the highest standards of human and labor rights.