Zalando is an online retailer for shoes and fashion offering an extensive selection for women, men and children from over 1,000 international brands. Founded in 2008 by Robert Gentz and David Schneider and incubated by the Samwer brothers' Rocket Internet, the company originated in Berlin, Germany. Following success in the German market, it expanded into Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Denmark and Poland. The company closed a €40.7m debt financing to cover operational costs and infrastructure projects. Providers of the debt financing include Commerzbank, Sparkasse Mittelthüringen and KfW Bankengruppe. Zalando plans to use the proceeds to extend its logistics centre at Erfurt and to start work on a new logistics centre at Mönchengladbach. Zalando began in 2008 as a Zappos clone and has expanded from selling shoes to a broader fashion assortment. The company operates an e-commerce platform serving customers across 12 markets and plans to launch in Poland and Norway soon. Zalando is investing in logistics, including building a major logistics center in Erfurt, Germany, to support its growth. Management says it will continue to invest in growth while building a solid company. The company reported €510 million in revenue for 2011; it has not disclosed 2012 figures. Customer counts and other operating metrics were not disclosed in the article. Zalando is an online shoe retailer founded by the Samwer brothers via Rocket Internet that has scaled rapidly across Europe. The site offers around 100,000 products from 1,300 brands and has incorporated roughly 150 French brands into its range. In September its monthly sales revenues in France surpassed €12 million, and the company expects total turnover of €120 million for the year. Zalando closed an undisclosed funding round thought to be about €100 million and used those funds to invest heavily in rapid market expansion. It is completing a logistics center at the beginning of 2013 to increase warehouse capacity by another 8 million items. The company is concentrating expansion on Italy, the United Kingdom, Austria and Switzerland, with France now its third-largest market after Germany and the Netherlands.

Total raised

$190M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

Oct 2012