This guide will give you an overview of your onboarding journey, including your tasks and requirements.
Updated August 29, 2024
Before signing the contract and starting your onboarding journey with Zalando, please familiarise yourself with the full list of tasks and mandatory requirements. Do also ensure you have access to zDirect in order to fill out your Company's Legal Entity, which is needed to set up your contract. zDirect is the main portal you will use to set up, manage and optimise your business on the Zalando platform.
Key steps to complete
Step 1: Select countries to launch
It’s important that you have already defined the countries in which you want to go live, before you start your onboarding with Zalando’s Partner Program. Find out all of the countries where you can sell with Zalando’s Partner program here.
Step 2: Choose your logistics set-up
Choose the logistics solution that best suits you. You can either use one of the Zalando Logistics Solutions or self-fulfilment. Explore detailed information on each logistics option available with Zalando here.
If you decide on self-fulfilment, ensure you collaborate with a last mile carrier from the approved list of logistics providers per country. Free shipping and returns (within 30 days) must be offered.
Step 3. Decide on your integration method
You can work with one of Zalando’s preferred third-party integrators (non-direct integration (non-DI)) or onboard via the direct integration (DI) via zDirect User Interface (UI) which is only available for ZFS Partners.
Step 4. Make an assortment plan
Collaborate with your Sales Manager to estimate the number of SKUs (articles per style and colour, not size) for your initial assortment launch, based on the total number of silhouettes or styles you offer.
Submit the predetermined launch assortment for creation during your article onboarding stage. You can check if your article already exists on Zalando, in which case you won't need to do a full article mapping, but only need to provide the article identifier and EANs to be ready to submit stock and price and start selling your articles.
Step 5. Check and sign agreements
Carefully check and sign the following agreements:
Partner Program Agreement
Connected Network Agreement OR
Contract with approved Last Mile Carrier (for own fulfilment only)
Contract with third party integrators
General requirements
Please submit the following requirements via channels indicated below:
Master Data requirements
Please submit the following requirements via email to your onboarding manager:
Logistics requirements
Relevant for all partners choosing self-fulfilment:
Relevant for all partners choosing Zalando Logistics Solutions:
Relevant for partners going live in Germany, Austria, France, Spain and Italy:
Technical requirements
Relevant for partners integrating via third party integrator:
Relevant for partners via Direct Integration (DI) using the zDirect User Interface:
Once you have gone through the action points mentioned above, you can start the onboarding process which consists of four stages:
