Fashion market in Germany

The German Fashion eCommerce market is predicted to reach US$28,220.5 million by 2024 and accounts for 25.5% of the total eCommerce market in Germany. It is expected to increase over the next years. The expected compound annual growth rate for the next four years (CAGR 2024-2028) will be 2.0%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$30,587.7 million by 2028. Within the Fashion market ECDB considers the following three sub-markets: Apparel, Footwear, and Bags & Accessories.

The online share refers to the proportion of the retail volume that is transacted via the Internet. It includes purchases via desktop PC, tablet or smartphone, both via website or app. Only retail of physical goods is taken into account. In the German Fashion retail market, the online share is 30.7% and will increase by an average of 4.9% to 37.1% by 2028.

With sales in the German Fashion market, zalando.de generated a revenue of US$2,497.6 million in 2023, which means it is the leading online store in this market. The Fashion ranking of Germany is based on all online stores that generated sales in this market in 2023. Due to a country- and category-dependent approach, both national and international online stores can be part of the ranking. The graph shows a filtered revenue. It only includes national sales within the respective market.

The German Fashion eCommerce market in 2023 in terms of offered payment methods is fragmented and dominated by a few providers with PayPal (E-wallets) covering the largest share with 94.5% of all online stores checked. Other offered payment methods in the German Fashion eCommerce market in 2023 are VISA (Cards) with 87.0%, Mastercard (Cards) with 86.9%, and Bank transfer/cash in advance (Bank transfer) with 66.3%. With 53.8% Sofortüberweisung (Bank transfer) has already a significantly smaller coverage compared to PayPal (E-wallets).

With 88.8% of all online retailers using DHL it is the dominating shipping service provider in the German Fashion eCommerce market in 2023. DPD follows at a distant second, utilized by 15.9% of online retailers. Other shipping service providers, including UPS (United Parcel Service), Hermes, and Deutsche Post, are employed by a significantly smaller proportion of online retailers.

Although Shopware holds a commanding lead with 18.0% of online stores using the shop software solution, the German Fashion eCommerce market in 2023 remains vibrant and competitive. This is due to the presence of several other shop software solutions, including Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and OXID EShop, which collectively hold a significant share of the market.