Zalando is retiring Connected Retail, the programme that let physical stores sell and ship from their own shop floor. Zalando is moving those retailers into the Partner Program and switching the Connected Retail technology off by 30 June 2027. September matters more than 2027. From September 2026, the same standard marketplace service fees apply to every Zalando partner, and partners had until 15 May to accept that consolidated structure. Zalando is winding down the ones who did not, amicably in its own word, by the end of August.
What actually changes
Zalando confirmed the move to FashionUnited after trade title Schuhkurier broke it. The company says it wants to give partners a holistic experience and access to its most advanced technologies, and it is consolidating its partner models to do that. Connected Retail retailers are invited across to the Partner Program.
Zalando is keeping physical retail. In its own words: "We are not saying goodbye to brick and mortar stores; we are simply updating the technology they use to connect with us." Partners can still fulfil orders from their own stores, across the 27 European markets Zalando serves.
Zalando is cushioning the fee step for a while. Retailers get two percentage points off until the end of 2027, and anyone who switches early gets a further point for six months. Both reliefs expire.
The fee lever is gone. The fulfilment lever is not.
Whatever terms you negotiated or inherited under Connected Retail, from September you pay what every other partner pays. The transitional points buy you until the end of 2027 and then stop.
That leaves one part of your Zalando margin under your own control: what it costs you to get the parcel out of the door, and to handle the return that follows. In fashion the second half is not a rounding error. Return rates of 30 to 40% are normal for the category, so a Zalando order costs you the shipping plus the odds you will pay again to bring the item back, inspect it and put it back on sale. That is a fulfilment question, and the Partner Program gives you two answers.
ZFS or self-fulfilment
Zalando Fulfilment Solutions means you ship your assortment into Zalando's warehouses and Zalando picks, packs, ships and processes the returns. It asks two things of you. Stock sitting in a Zalando warehouse can only serve Zalando, so it cannot fill the Shopify order that lands an hour later, and a size that sells through on one channel sits idle on another. You also take on Zalando's labelling, packaging and delivery specifications, with logistics KPIs and non-compliance charges attached.
Self-fulfilment keeps the stock yours. One pool, in one warehouse, answering Zalando alongside your own store and every other marketplace you sell on. It works only if whoever runs that warehouse can hold Zalando's despatch and returns standards while holding everyone else's at the same time. That is the job brands hire a fulfilment partner for.
One warehouse, Zalando included
We hold your stock in Italy and fulfil across 100+ sales channels via our WMS' integrations with popular shop platforms and marketplaces, Zalando among them. The same pool serves your Zalando orders, your Shopify orders and your Amazon orders, so no unit is locked to one channel. We despatch multi-carrier on flat euro rates, tracking is branded, and Iris address correction fixes around 90% of wrong Italian addresses before the parcel leaves the building, which in fashion means fewer failed deliveries turning into returns you never sold. Returns come back to that same building for inspection and restocking, and stock levels update in the Minerva portal as they go.
Zalando is still worth selling on: 27 markets and a fashion audience that is hard to reach elsewhere. The question the September schedule forces is where the stock behind those orders should live, now that the fee side has stopped being yours to negotiate. See how we handle multichannel fulfilment, or what fashion and apparel needs from a warehouse.
If you sell on Zalando and the September schedule has you rerunning the numbers, tell us what you sell and where it ships from now, and we will show you what running it from Italy would cost instead. Get in touch and we will work through it with you.