Zalando

Our Product Design community came together for the third Annual Bonfire & Design Community Awards—a vibrant day of celebration, connection, and creativity. The event was packed with engaging workshops, insightful talks from our Design Directors, and an after-party to wrap-up the festivities 🎉 It was a time for reflection, celebrating the achievements of the past year while looking forward to the opportunities of 2025. With 130 attendees, the day was filled with laughter, inspiration, and stronger bonds within our amazing community. Thanks to the organisers, hosts, facilitators, and Design & Research Operations for bringing this third edition to life, including Gare Anighoro, Dr Lucy Power, Irene Chambi, Tiago Ramos, Ana-Maria Ghinita, Chad Wright, Yishi Yang, Ama Hoffmann, Gloria Rupprecht, Çiğdem Demir, Şeyda Ülgen, Mary Michel Rizk, Gonzalo Vásquez Correa, Oyindamola Akinleye, and Maree Hamilton 👏 #InsideZalando #ZalandoDesign

The past year has been a memorable one for all of us at Zalando. We are ending the year on a high note, brimming with belief that our success story is only just at the beginning. This wouldn’t have been possible without the energy, dedication and hard work of all Zalando teams, and I can’t thank you enough. 2024 was such an eventful year because we focused on what has made us successful since we started selling shoes online in 2008 - pushing ourselves to really understand the shifts and opportunities in our industry, and then building the products that our customers and partners love. There have been many special moments in the last 12 months, and there’s no way I can do justice to them all. But one that needs to be mentioned is the release of our strategy update at the start of 2024 to build a pan-European #ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle. Our strategy update brought clarity to our vision, and it has been remarkable to see how quickly the teams took on speed and started demonstrating that we can deliver and outperform the market again. It’s great to see how AI and data now play an even more significant role in serving our customers and how they help us detect emerging fashion trends. We refreshed our brand identity, launched Zalando Partner, enabled new sales channels and markets for ZEOS, and leveraged this year’s Summer of Sports with dedicated sports campaigns and our first adaptive sports collection. We also continued to keep an open mind and learn from others, using the latest leading innovations worldwide to offer our customers and partners the best possible experience. Our strategic collaboration with OpenAI has been off to a great start, and we are excited about our new tech site in Shenhzen which will help us to combine e-commerce with inspiration and entertainment in new ways. And now, following an intense and successful Cyber Week season, we ended the year with a big bang. We announced our intention to team up with ABOUT YOU to together lead the way in European fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. The team-up plays perfectly into our ecosystem strategy, serving the needs of customers and partners through our combined and distinct B2C and B2B offerings. We have known the co-founders and co-CEOs Hannes Wiese, Tarek Müller and Sebastian Betz for a long time and have tremendous respect for what they have built over the last decade. We can’t wait to get to know so many great new colleagues and know that together, the teams will create something very special. Now, for 2025, we have set ourselves a new theme: fast forward. It reminds me of the early days of Zalando, where speed and pragmatic execution was the key determinant of making us successful. It feels like the most exciting phase since Zalando was founded. With the year coming to a close, we will focus on spending the festive season with our loved ones - and then come back with a roar in 2025. We can’t wait to continue our growth journey. #fastforward #2024rewind

On the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) this month, Valuable 500 interviewed 33 global C-suite executives, including our own Chief People Officer, Astrid Arndt, on how successful disability-inclusive leaders drive organisational transformation and business value. "Being a disability-confident leader means embracing a growth mindset—continuously listening, learning, adapting and striving to create an inclusive environment. Lasting progress comes when our commitment to support and empower Disabled colleagues and customers is truly embedded in our culture and day-to-day practice”, shares Astrid. We’re proud to have contributed and collaborated on the publication, “Unlocking Disability-Inclusive Leadership”, written in collaboration with Jonathan J Kaufman, and encourage you to find out more about the efforts that each leader and company can make to create a more inclusive workplace. More here: https://zln.do/3ZpqO0e #DisabilityInclusion #InternationalDayofDisabilities #IDPWD2024 #ZalandoNews

Learn more about our impact in Europe, through a report which we commissioned with the international research and advisory firm Oxford Economics, to produce an assessment of both our direct and indirect economic impact. The study „The Economic Impact of Zalando in Europe“ highlights our significant contributions to the European economy. Founded in 2008 as an online retailer, we’ve grown our customer base to more than 50 million. In 2023, the company supported a total gross value added (GVA) of €9,521.6 million in Europe, supporting a total of 113,000 jobs across the continent. We’re proud to contribute substantially to Europe’s economic development - a path we will continue to pursue building a true pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. Find out more: https://zln.do/3P51dFq #EconomicImpact #ZalandoNews

Ever wondered about the hottest trends of 2024? Our new Trend Rewind has got you covered! ⏪ For the first time, we’re launching the “Zalando 2024 Trend Rewind” experience based on our Trend Spotter. Based on our own data, Trend Rewind is an interactive summary of 2024's fashion trends, showcasing the hottest styles, their growth in popularity and engaging content like expert insights, trend analysis, and visual stories. We’re constantly looking for ways to inspire our customers and support them in finding the styles they love. This feature delivers a fun, reflective, data-driven recap of the year's biggest trends, providing our customers an even more engaging and entertaining experience, which is an important part of our strategy. Read more in our newsroom: https://zln.do/3Dk1jq5 #Rewind #TrendSpotter #ZalandoNews

Our Zalando eCommerce Platform and Global Project Management Organization teams came together to celebrate their 2024 achievements and collaboration. The day kicked off with a breakfast social, offering a blend of creativity and delicious bites to fuel both minds and appetites. After a day filled with meaningful connections, the teams wrapped up with an evening social featuring karaoke and snacks—a perfect way to create memories and moments to carry into 2025 🎊 A big thank you to our organizing team for bringing this event to life and wrapping up the year on such a high note! #InsideZalando #ZalandoTech

Now that the evenings are darker and colder, it can be much harder to stay motivated to stick with your usual exercise routine. Unless you’re already at the gym, because you work on our Zalando Berlin campus! Our gym is fully equipped with treadmills, weight training machines, stationary bikes, a rowing machine, and more, empowering our colleagues to achieve their goals and stay active. Plus, thanks to our Peer Power Instructors, we offer sports classes four days a week in the studio area, providing Zalandos with a chance to connect over a shared passion for fitness. Check out testimonials and sneak peeks from some of our gym regulars for inspiration to fuel your 2025 New Year’s resolutions! 🤸 #InsideZalando #ZalandoGameOn #PeerPower

This week, we're joined by Antonis Vasilopoulos, Head of Product Assortment and Steering - Partner Tech, who explains how he and his team use data to shape the way we shop online. He explains the complex processes that help to manage the Zalando assortment, estimate future demand, and sales trends, as well as the tools and algorithms used to help deliver maximum impact for brands 📈 Antonis also shares with our host, Janine, his thoughts on changing market conditions in the e-commerce landscape and the impact of hiring on workplace culture. Tune in: Spotify: zln.do/3ztO1lS Apple Podcasts: zln.do/3NmR9FO Or your favourite podcast platform! #InsideZalando #ZalandoPiecesOfMe #ZalandoTech

We continuously strive to enhance our platform capabilities to provide robust, scalable, and developer-friendly solutions. One such initiative is the integration of Open Policy Agent (OPA) into Skipper, our open-source ingress controller and reverse proxy, to deliver Authorization as a Service. This integration not only allows externalising authorization policies but also aligns with our goals of solving security concerns on the infrastructure with efficiency and developer experience in mind. Enabling OPA for a specific application is as easy as just stating “application X should be protected” without touching multiple YAML files, adding monitoring, and inheriting many more responsibilities to be compliant. Magnus Jungsbluth and Sandor Szuecs provide more details on this work on our Engineering Blog: https://zln.do/3DgDOhD #ZalandoTech #InsideZalando

🎄 Spreading holiday joy with 200 Zalando Volunteers! 🎁 In early December, enthusiastic Zalandos came together, fueled by creativity and a festive spirit, to pack and decorate over 1,000 personalised presents for children in need in Berlin. Together, with vostel volunteering, our trusted external partner for volunteering projects, these beautifully crafted gift bags were prepared with love and care for children, supported by seven local non-profit organisations. The goal? To bring smiles to their faces and spread some holiday magic. A huge thank you to our incredible volunteers for making this initiative possible. We hope these gifts brighten the children’s holiday season and wish them and their families joy! 💝 Read more about volunteering at Zalando here: https://zln.do/3NEvRVd #ZalandoVolunteers #ZalandoNews