Zalando
multinational e-commerce company specializing in shoes and fashion
Zalando SE is a German multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Berlin, specializing in fashion, beauty, and footwear. It is Europe's largest online fashion retailer. Founded in 2008 by Robert Gentz and David Schneider, the company has expanded its operations to 30 European markets, currently serving a customer base of 62 million active users.
Beyond its primary multi-brand online shopping platform, which includes its own private label brands, Zalando operates the shopping club Lounge by Zalando, maintains physical outlet stores in Germany, and provides logistics and marketing services for retail partners. In November 2025, Zalando finalized the acquisition of its competitor About You, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary. As of 2025, the company generated revenues of €12.3 billion and employed approximately 16,500 people.
History
Zalando was founded in 2008 by Robert Gentz and David Schneider in Berlin with investment capital from the three Samwer brothers. Gentz, Schneider and Oliver Samwer met each other through their studies at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.
Inspired by US online retailer Zappos, Zalando initially specialized in the sale of footwear. The name of the company was derived from the Spanish word for shoes (zapatos).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Zalando” as multinational e-commerce company specializing in shoes and fashion. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as multinational e-commerce company specializing in shoes and fashion. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136570. VIAF identifies the subject as 305438073. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zalando” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.