The German group will launch "a program to reduce several hundred positions within the teams," said the management of the online fashion accessories seller in a letter to its employees on Tuesday.
Zalando, headquartered in Berlin, employs 17,000 people worldwide.
"The macroeconomic environment has become more complicated", detailed the two CEOs and founders of the company Robert Gentz and David Schneider in this text.
"Some parts of our business have grown too fast," they added.
The tech sector is facing a difficult economic environment in the context of high inflation and rising interest rates after a good period, in particular at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and the confinements which benefited the sale on the Internet.
The job cuts are expected to affect “many divisions of Zalando, including senior management levels,” the executives explained.
On the other hand, employees of "logistics centers, customer service and in stores" will not be affected.
Just like the "operational posts" of Zalando Studio, which produces photos of the items sold online.
The other details of the plan will only be known after "a consultation" of employee representatives by management, which has already started, they assured.
Since its founding in 2008, the start-up Zalando has become one of the leading European groups in the online sale of clothing, claiming more than 50 million active customers.
This announcement comes as social plans are multiplying in the digital sector, all over the world.
After layoffs at Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, Google in turn announced 12,000 job cuts in January, or just over 6% of its workforce.
Microsoft has announced 10,000 layoffs by the end of March.
In Germany, the software giant SAP will cut 3,000 jobs.
At 11:41 GMT, the title of Zalando lost 1.68%, in last place in the Dax flagship index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which fell by 0.38% to 15,418.77 points.
© 2023 AFP