Cyber Week adds 1m new Zalando customers, Connected Retail is key

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 2, 2020

It's no surprise that online retailers have done particularly well this year and that's been very clear from results we've heard so far relating to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Cyber Week overall.

Germany’s Zalando is the latest to report a record-breaking performance as it said it acquired over a million new customers during its sixth Cyber Week, beating last year’s new customer record. And its Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) rose around 35% year-on-year. 

Co-CEO David Schneider hailed Cyber Week as "another milestone for our platform strategy, as the share of Partner Program increased strongly”. 

He said that with physical retail impacted by lockdowns in the peak season, “we were particularly keen to facilitate participation of new and existing brick-and-mortar partners via our Connected Retail program. We are looking forward to expanding the program further in 2021.”

In fact, the share of GMV generated via the Partner Program, including Connected Retail, averaged 30%, which was up significantly from 2019’s 20% share. 

The company added that more than 2,300 physical stores took part in Zalando’s Cyber Week via the Connected Retail program, and 250+ new stores onboarded in November alone. In Germany, Connected Retail’s share averaged about 11% of GMV.

It’s also interesting that this year’s Cyber Week bestsellers were running tights.