Zalando’s Q1 results release on Wednesday continued a succession of strong reports with the German e-tail giant saying group GMV rose 21.7%, revenue was up 23.8% and adjusted EBIT jumped as well, although not all the figures in the report were positive – specifically net income, which can often turn negative for companies in heavy investment stages of their journeys.
Zalando also spoke at length about its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and said it’s further expanding its Assistant “into a true lifestyle companion, deploying advanced robots across its logistics network, and using generative AI image processing to boost product onboarding speed”.
More of that later. First, let’s look at the numbers. Group GMV grew by 6% on a pro-forma basis and 21.7% on a reported basis to €4.3 billion. Group revenue increased by 3.4% pro-forma and 23.8% reported to €3 billion.
B2C revenue rose from €2.18 billion to €2.7 billion with B2B revenue up from €240 million to just under €297 million.
Adjusted EBIT was up 38.7% to €65 million, supported by €10 million in synergies from the acquisition of About You. B2C adjusted EBIT actually fell from €41 million to €38.2 million, while at the B2B unit it jumped from €5.8 million to €25.6 million. And net income was a loss of €87.6 million compared to a profit of €9.9 million in Q1 a year ago.
The wider picture of growth came despite the volatile geopolitical situation and subdued macroeconomic environment since it issued its full-year outlook in early March. But it said “consumer demand persists, demonstrating the resilience of Zalando’s business”.
And it has confirmed its guidance for the full year, expecting GMV and revenue growth of 12%–17% on a reported basis and an adjusted EBIT between €660 million and €740 million.
B2c and B2B
During the quarter, the company said that in the B2C segment, it achieved strong pro-forma growth across all three consumer apps — “the brand-led Zalando app, the trend-focused About You app, and the deal-driven Lounge by Zalando app” — that help to target distinct customer needs.
About You and Lounge delivered double-digit growth and Q1 saw a strong start to SS26, with particularly robust performance across lifestyle categories including Sports, Kids & Family, and Beauty. That all helped drive the company to that record-high active customer number.
Importantly too, the partner business grew “significantly faster than the retail business” across both Zalando and About You, “reflecting the platform’s continued transition towards a higher-margin, capital-light model”. Zalando’s loyalty programme continued to deepen customer engagement as membership grew to 18.5 million Plus members.
The strong growth in B2B was also significant given how Zalando is acting as a partner to many big and small names from around Europe.
The company is “building the operating system for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce [and] continues to unlock digital business opportunities for brands and retailers and reduce the complexities of cross-border e-commerce in Europe”. Its ZEOS logistics operation successfully launched its first pilot partners in Norway and added two new sales channels, bringing the total to 26 markets and 20 sales channels.
Transformational AI
As mentioned, the company “made several significant advances in applying AI as a powerful catalyst for both growth and efficiency”.
The Zalando Assistant now “fully supports beauty-related recommendations, allowing customers to receive personalised product suggestions that span both fashion and beauty in a single conversation”. Year-to-date, almost 10 million customers have asked the Assistant for advice, up from 6 million in the whole of 2025.
It said this “marks a defining step in the evolution of the Assistant from a shopping tool into a true lifestyle companion, and reflects Zalando’s ambition to grow alongside its customers across every dimension of their lifestyle spending”.
In logistics, it has moved forward with the strategic rollout of AI-driven robots across its pan-European fulfilment network in collaboration with Nomagic. Some 2 million picks are automated by robots every month, “increasing operational speed, reducing manual handling, and enhancing the resilience and scalability of Zalando’s fulfilment operations across Europe”.
AI has “also helped to improve the speed and quality of partner article onboarding”. Meanwhile Gen AI image processing now helps to automatically detect and correct visual errors and “enriches around 6,000 articles daily with missing material composition data”. It all means up to 85% of articles are now ready to go online faster, “reducing friction for partners while accelerating time-to-sale”.
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