Zalando, which specializes in selling clothes, announced it will build a new logistics warehouse somewhere in northern Italy in 2018 that could create up to 1,000 new jobs in the coming years.
Italy has a become key scale-up market for the Berlin-born start up which is now worth over €10 billion and employs more than 13,000 people worldwide, according to company spokesman Matteo Bovio.
"We started operation in a satellite warehouse in Italy last year (located in Stradella, Pavia), and we are now about to start the construction of a large facility," Bovio told The Local Italy.
"Besides these investments, we have a team mostly composed of Italians, who work constantly for improving and further localizing the service for our customers," he added.
Bovio says Italy is an exciting prospect for Zalando as e-commerce is relatively new in the country and the fashion sector is undergoing large changes.
"Italy has a big fashion market, which is transitioning very quickly towards e-commerce. The growth rate of online fashion is steady and it’s been ongoing for several years, but there is still a great potential, as the overall share of online in the fashion industry is below seven percent (and this may even be an optimistic estimate)," says Bovio
In 2015, the Italian e-commerce sector grew 15.6 per cent, with nearly 18 million people shopping online, according to data from e-commerce-europe.eu. Total e-commerce sales reached €16.6 billion in the same year.
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Zalando is set to open new warehouses in Stradella near Milan, to complement the company's expansion into the French, Swedish and Polish markets, according to a recent statement.
Zalando however believe that the benefits of Italy's fashion-conscious culture will be a natural fit for the hundreds of clothes brands it distributes.
"The average consumer is very fashion-conscious, and even though it’s sometimes challenging to 'convert' Italian customers to online shopping, once they try it they are typically very enthusiastic," Bovio said.
The spokesman said it made sense for the German giant online clothes retailer to have a larger presence in Italy. "There is also the sourcing aspect," says Bovio. "Being present in Italy allows us to be closer to so many great brands that are an essential part of our assortment."
Zalando started out in 2008 in Berlin as a company offering a way to buy shoes online. It now operates in 14 European countries.
Whether Italians will take to the idea of buying their clothes online and not on the corso, the classic high street present in even the smallest of Italian towns, remains to be seen.