The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2014–2025
About You raised €1B and never made a profit — Zalando picked it up for parts
A German online fashion retailer went public at €3.5B, lost over €1B in eight years, and was sold to rival Zalando at a 70% discount.
About You · Zalando · Otto Group · 2025-07
What happened
About You was founded in Hamburg in 2014 by former Zalando executives Tarek Müller and Hannes Wiese as a fashion-focused online retailer targeting Gen-Z and millennial customers. The company grew rapidly on venture capital and went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2021 at a valuation of approximately €3.5 billion, raising €649 million in its IPO.
Rapid growth masked a structural problem: About You never turned a profit. Net losses from 2018 through 2025 were: €115M (2018), €114M (2019), €80M (2020), €60M (2021), €124M (2022), €229M (2023), €113M (2024), and €115M (2025). Cumulative losses exceeded €1 billion. The company's B2B division (SCAYLE, its proprietary e-commerce infrastructure) was spun off in 2023 in an attempt to focus, but the core fashion business continued losing money. Operations in Ireland were exited entirely.
In December 2024, Zalando — the very company About You's founders had left a decade earlier — announced its intention to acquire all shares. The deal valued About You at approximately €1.1 billion, or about one-third of its 2021 peak valuation. By July 2025, Zalando had secured over 90% of shares, About You was delisted from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and its logistics and IT infrastructure were integrated into Zalando's operations. The IPO investor who had bought at €3.5 billion was left holding a company sold for roughly €1.1 billion — a 70% loss.
Why it happened
- About You prioritised growth over profit from the start, and e-commerce fashion could not support a second Zalando — gross margins were never high enough to cover the tech and marketing spend.
- The 2021 IPO was timed to a euphoric market for e-commerce stocks; when the post-pandemic normalisation hit, About You had no path to profitability and no moat against its larger rival.
- Spinning off SCAYLE was an admission that About You's best asset was its technology, not its retail business — but even that could not sustain standalone profitability.
- Founding a direct competitor to your former employer in the same city, with the same model, meant a winner-takes-most market with no room for two. About You was the loser from day one.
The lesson
A company that has never been profitable is a venture bet, not a going concern — when the growth market closes, the acquirer gets the assets and the shareholders get the lesson.
Aftermath
About You was delisted and absorbed into Zalando. Its logistics infrastructure and technology were integrated into the parent. The founders returned to the company where they had started their careers, now as employees rather than executives.
Sources
- Wikipedia — About You: net losses from 2018 to 2025, IPO valuation, Zalando acquisition, Ireland exit
- Modaes — Zalando definitively closes its takeover bid for About You (Jul 2025; 90%+ stake; delisted; full ownership)
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