A Polish streetwear brand on Zalando, across four markets
A brand made in Poland sells in Western Europe on one channel. We run the channel end-to-end, from listings to returns and the last mile.
The client
A Polish streetwear brand, manufactured at home. A catalogue of a few hundred items, a team of a dozen or so people. It sells via its own multilingual shop and a physical store. We run the Zalando channel.
Where it started
A clothing brand on Zalando faces two challenges at once. The first is the scale of the data. Every model in several colours and a full size run produces hundreds of variants, and they have to be listed before the season starts. The second is operations. Returns in fashion run high, and selling across several markets adds logistics, order handling in multiple languages, and the platform’s requirements around shipping data.
Under that load, the channel is hard to run alongside your own shop.
In practice, it came down to three things:
- a collection means hundreds of variants to list in step with the season,
- each additional market means separate onboarding, logistics and support,
- returns in fashion are high enough to require their own range analysis.
What we did
- We list and maintain the brand’s range on Zalando, working from attribute mapping in Base.com. It is the integrator most Polish sellers use for listings, still widely known by its old name.
- We extended the channel to additional European markets and handled onboarding for each.
- We handle orders and platform cases, and translate product pages.
- We analyse returns and flag products to drop. The channel should not lose money on items that come back.
- We manage price and availability, including raising prices in the channel and watching for out-of-stock items.
Results
The brand sells on Zalando across several Western European markets. The range is listed from a single mapped catalogue, and orders, returns and logistics are handled on our side.
What the client feels most is the load taken off a team that had not worked with the platform before. Zalando can be unforgiving towards sellers. A moment of inattention or a routine data error can end with offers suppressed in the platform’s search. In the worst case, the seller account is deactivated. Reactivation can take months and may not work, so the channel here is run by people who work to those rules every day.
What this means for you
Clothing brands thinking about selling abroad usually stop at the operational side. Onboarding for each new market, returns, support in languages they do not speak. That part can be handed over together with the channel. See how we run sales on Zalando: how to start selling on Zalando
