About You’s doubled loss is “better than expected”

German fashion platform About You has managed to raise its turnover by almost half last year. The company tries to distinguish itself from rivals like Zalando by targeting young people, but in the meantime continues to make substantial losses.

Twice as much loss

About You’s broken financial year 2021/2022 (ending in February) was still dominated by the Covid pandemic and thus by strong e-commerce sales. Turnover rose by 48.5 % to 1.73 billion euros. In the German-speaking ‘DACH’ region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), the e-commerce player recorded 27.3 % growth, in the rest of Europe the growth was “exceptionally high” at + 65.6 %.

The fashion marketplace also recorded lower losses than expected: the operating margin (EBITDA) amounted to 66.9 million euros below zero, twice as much as the – 35.5 million euros a year earlier. In the DACH region, the company is already profitable with a profit margin of 6.6 %, but the rest of Europe continues to eat into those margins due to high marketing investments. This current year, the marketplace expects to lose fifty to seventy million euros.

Fashion platform in the metaverse

About You is now active in 26 European countries after expanding into Southern Europe and Scandinavia, while it also opened a second distribution hub in Slovakia. By next year, the company wants to add hubs in Poland and France. The company says it served 34.8 % more active customers, bringing the total to 11.4 million.

As the platform primarily targets young people from Generations Y to Z, it continues to invest in digital innovations. In September last year, live shopping was introduced, and this year About You is entering the metaverse with the digital fashion platform Hypewear. In parallel, there will be more physical events, such as the About You Awards at the end of May. In this way, the company expects to achieve a 25 – 35 % growth in turnover, despite the difficult market conditions.