Evgenia Koptyug
Research expert covering the German market
Fashion e-commerce in Germany - statistics & facts
The fashion e-commerce industry has undergone a period of rapid growth over the past few years. Fashion e-commerce involves the buying and selling of clothes, shoes, and other fashion items online. The industry leaders are made up of both shops which exist solely online as well as stores that started on the high street, but then branched out to selling their products online. There are many reasons why online shopping is preferred by certain consumers. Some of the most frequently cited advantages include lower prices, speed, and the fact that there is a wider choice of products. Germany is currently ranked fifth on the list of countries generating the highest revenue from fashion e-commerce.
Leading fashion e-commerce brands
The German online store Zalando is one of the front runners in the fashion e-commerce industry. In 2023, Zalando had nearly three times the number of visitors to their website than their closest competitor, H&M. Furthermore, they reached their highest number of active customer accounts, 50.3 million, by the third quarter of 2022, highlighting that online shopping for fashion is here to stay. Zalando was founded in 2008 and already had an annual revenue of over two billion euros by 2014. Today that figure exceeds nine billion. Since Zalando sells merchandise predominantly online, its indisputable success shows that people are increasingly turning to online options when it comes to purchasing fashion items.Social media and fashion e-commerce
An increasingly popular way for fashion brands to advertise their products is through social media and particularly through advertisements by social media influencers. An influencer is a term used to refer to people with a large social media following. Often companies will reach out to influencers and pay a fee for posts including their clothes and items. Sometimes a code is also provided that followers can use to get money off purchases they make on the website. In 2022, the online shop NA-KD had the most cooperations with fashion influencers. Although fashion is the type of content that people are most interested in on social media, the majority of Germans are not enticed by influencer ads. Only 17 percent of people had purchased items after they had seen them advertised on social media.
