Zalando Accelerates Sustainability Efforts as Customer Demand for More Sustainable Fashion Grows

• Zalando significantly grows sustainability assortment to over 60,000 items and introduces a sustainability flag to its Beauty assortment 
• Share of active customers buying sustainable items more than doubled to 40 percent since beginning of 2020
• Zalando launches “redeZIGN for Circularity,” its first exclusive capsule collection designed for reuse or recycling

BERLIN, OCTOBER 8, 2020// Zalando, Europe’s leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle, has significantly grown its sustainability assortment from 27,000 to over 60,000 items as the share of active customers buying more sustainable fashion more than doubled to 40 percent since the start of the year. Together with industry partners circular.fashion and Fashion for Good, Zalando makes sustainability even more desirable by launching “redeZIGN for Circularity”, its first exclusive capsule collection designed with the principles of circularity in mind. The collection is one of many measures Zalando has introduced since October 2019, guided by its do.MORE sustainability strategy, which aims for a net-positive impact for people and the planet.

“We have seen extraordinary growth in customer demand for more sustainable fashion since the beginning of the year,” says Rubin Ritter, Zalando’s Co-CEO. “According to a recent internal survey, 34 percent of our customers said that in light of the coronavirus pandemic, sustainability has become more important to them. With this major shift in mindset, there is a demand and momentum for change, and a need for the fashion industry to transform. Together with our partners, we want to be the engine for this change and enable our customers to make more sustainable choices even more easily.”

Customers are, for example, now able to shop Beauty even more sustainably, as a sustainability flag was introduced to the category. This enables customers to choose from around 1,000 beauty products with attributes like organic, natural, less packaging, forest-friendly, biodegradable or kind to animals. Additionally, Zalando launched its new pre-owned category in September, enabling customers to effortlessly buy and trade pre-owned fashion on Zalando with an unmatched level of convenience.

Kate Heiny, Zalando’s Director Sustainability: “We are thrilled that just a few weeks after introducing our pre-owned offer, we are collaboratively launching our first collection designed with the principles of circularity in mind”. 

“redeZIGN for circularity” is a capsule collection of five pieces especially designed for reuse and recycling, meeting circular.fashion’s guidelines for recyclability. The collection serves increasing customer demand for more sustainable fashion and the growing number of consumers who say that sustainability has become more important to them. The “redeZIGN for circularity” pilot is a capsule collection of Zalando’s private label ZIGN.

Ina Budde, co-founder and managing director at circular.fashion: “The goal is to better understand how circularity principles can be applied at a platform with a reach like Zalando’s. This includes the whole lifecycle of clothing from design to the end of use, what product information customers need, and how to make it scalable and engaging to customers.”

Today’s update marks the one year anniversary of Zalando’s do.MORE strategy. Over the past year, the company launched a broad variety of measures including milestones such as setting science-based targets with a concrete plan to reduce its carbon footprint in line with the Paris Agreement or making sustainability assessment mandatory for its private labels and partner brands. This initiative moves the industry closer towards a system of standardized measurement that drives meaningful and lasting improvement. Zalando’s accelerated sustainability efforts resulted in around 600 million euros GMV from more sustainable fashion in the first half of 2020, or around 15* percent of total GMV, bringing Zalando closer to its target of 20 percent by 2023.

*As Zalando continues to elevate its standards and expand its requirements to other parts of the business, we are likely to see some fluctuations in this number.