From a Berlin Apartment to a European Champion: the Zalando Story - [Session VivaTech] - Theme: Risk, Build, Scale
Speakers
Robert Gentz
co-Founder and co-CEO
Zalando
Mariam Zaidi
News Anchor
TRT World
Risk, Build, Scale
From a Berlin Apartment to a European Champion: the Zalando Story
distance
Purple Stage
calendar_today
June 17
12:40 PM - 1:00 PM - CET
What does it take to build one of Europe's most iconic tech companies from scratch? Eighteen years ago, Robert Gentz and his co-founders started selling flip flops out of an apartment in Berlin. Today, Zalando is a continent-wide fashion platform, and it's still growing. In this conversation, Gentz traces the full arc: the early bets that paid off, the business model that proved resilient, and the discipline behind rapid but sustainable growth. He'll speak frankly about the risks and challenges that shaped the company, the moves being made to stay ahead, including expansion beyond Europe with and a push into B2B, and what the next chapter looks like for a platform supercharged by AI with ambitions that keep growing.