Robert Gentz

Robert Gentz co-leads Zalando as Co-CEO (alongside David Schneider), overseeing Europe's largest online fashion and lifestyle platform. Zalando serves more than 50 million active customers across 25 European markets, offering fashion, shoes, accessories, and beauty products from thousands of brands. The Berlin-based company was founded in 2008 and has grown to become one of Europe's most valuable technology companies. Zalando is evolving from a pure online retailer (buying inventory and reselling it) into a platform ecosystem: its Partner Program allows brands to sell directly to consumers on Zalando's platform (a marketplace model with higher margins and lower capital intensity), Zalando Fulfillment Solutions (ZFS) provides logistics services to partner brands, and Zalando Marketing Services sells advertising to brands. This platform transformation follows a strategy similar to Amazon's evolution. European online fashion penetration remains well below the U.S., providing significant growth runway. Key stock drivers include gross merchandise volume (GMV) growth, active customer growth and order frequency, platform transition progress (partner program versus wholesale), fulfillment and logistics efficiency, ZEOS (B2B logistics-as-a-service), competition with ASOS, About You (now being acquired by Zalando), Amazon Fashion, and Shein, marketing efficiency, and European consumer spending on fashion.