Europe's largest online fashion retailer Zalando achieved sales in the double-digit billion range for the first time last year.

The proceeds climbed - also thanks to new markets - by almost 30 percent to 10.4 billion euros, as the Berlin group announced on Tuesday.

However, things will not continue at this pace.

For the current year, Zalando expects sales to increase by 12 to 19 percent to a maximum of 12.3 billion euros.

Possible effects of the war in Ukraine have not yet been taken into account.

Zalando is already feeling this.

"For our customers in Central and Eastern Europe, other things are currently in the foreground than shopping for fashion," said David Schröder, the manager responsible for the operative business to journalists.

Adjusted operating profit (EBIT) rose last year by 11 percent to 468.4 million euros.

Both EBIT and sales were at the upper end of the company's forecast and, on average, above analysts' expectations.

For 2022, Zalando leaves a wide range and promises an adjusted operating result of between 430 and 510 million euros.

Benefiting from the Corona crisis

Like Asos and Boohoo from Great Britain and the rapidly growing competitor About You from Hamburg, Zalando was one of the beneficiaries of the Corona crisis, in which many people only began to buy clothes and cosmetics online in view of the closed shops.

“Since the summer we have been seeing a normalization of demand.

We expect this to continue this year," said Schröder.

The group now has more than 48 million customers in 23 European countries - around ten million more customers than at the end of 2020.

In order to position itself more broadly, Zalando relies on the platform business.

With this, other retailers, fashion brands or stationary shops can sell their goods via Zalando and have to pay money for this as well as for logistics services.

More than 5,800 partners and almost 7,000 stationary shops are now connected to the Zalando platform, with which the company now achieves 30 percent of its gross merchandise volume.

This had climbed to 14.3 billion euros last year, is expected to grow to a maximum of 17.6 billion euros this year and will be more than 30 billion euros by 2025.

"We are well on the way to achieving this goal," said company boss David Schneider, who founded Zalando in 2008 together with Robert Gentz.