It was a good six months ago that David Schröder stood in the Federal Chancellery with numerous other German business leaders. The Zalando co-head represented the listed fashion platform in the “Made for Germany” initiative – according to his own description, a “cross-industry initiative” in which “114 leading companies and investors come together for a strong, successful and sustainable economy in Germany”. The members promise to jointly invest 764 billion euros in Germany by 2028. During his visit in July 2025, Chancellor Friedrich Merz described this as one of the “largest investment initiatives of the past decades” and a “strong signal” for the change in mood in Germany.
Even back then, the composition of the promised investment sum was rather nebulous. And Zalando, like many other participants, kept quiet about concrete promises. The group is now announcing that it will close its logistics location in Erfurt. 2,700 employees are affected.
There are economically plausible reasons for this. After merging with rival About You, Zalando looked at its logistics network and found excess capacity. Zalando used to ship to all of Europe from Erfurt, its first completely self-developed logistics center. Today Zalando has three additional and more modern locations in Germany and even more in the rest of Europe, where growth is significantly stronger. The company no longer wants to supply all markets from all locations, but rather operates more regionally in order to deliver faster. Germany is overrepresented there. And the 100 million euros in synergies on earnings before interest and taxes from the About You takeover promised to the capital market in the medium term have to come from somewhere.
Nevertheless, the company has to ask itself why it basks in the PR show of “Made for Germany” only to close its largest German location six months later. This undoubtedly sends a signal to the German location – just not the one that the Chancellor and the initiators of “Made for Germany” had wanted.
