ZFS international warehousing

In this article, you will learn how International warehousing, formerly known as ZFS International Outbound or the ZFS International Program, can benefit your business, and what your next steps are to enable it. Important note: Zalando is not a legal or tax advisor. All information is provided as a guideline and must be validated with licensed advisors. 

In short, International warehousing is a solution designed to enable Zalando to ship orders to your customer from the local (i.e. non-German) warehouses in our network. In the default setup for Zalando Fulfillment Solutions (ZFS), all customer orders are fulfilled from our three main fulfilment centres in Germany: Mönchengladbach, Lahr, and Erfurt. With International warehousing, you unlock nine additional fulfilment centres across Poland, Italy, France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. You can choose which locations you wish to enable based on your evolving market priorities. 

• No more cross-border fees: Save costs on orders that are shipped from our local fulfilment centres.

• Get returns back online quickly: Reduce Time to Online (TTO) now Time to Article Creation (TTAC) from 8-11 days to 1-3 days in the local market.

• Faster customer delivery: Stay close to your customers. Reduce returns due to late deliveries.

• Increase your stock turnover: Sell returns again quickly in the local market. Increase stock turnover and reduce your storage fees.

• Improved inbound flexibility: Increasing available inbound capacities and appointments at our hubs in Germany, Poland, and Italy.

Optimise your stock distribution: Distribute your stock based on regional customer demand. Increase sales effectiveness and turnover rates.

1. VAT registration: Valid VAT registrations are required for each country where you choose to enable an additional fulfilment centre.

2. Tax reporting: The sale of goods must be included in VAT returns filed in each country where a fulfilment centre is located, for the goods sold from that country.

3. Intrastat reporting: The reporting of the movement of goods from one EU state to another must be presented to the local authorities in each country where a fulfilment centre is enabled.

1. Watch the webinar below, hosted by an expert from our Operations team, to learn more about International warehousing:

Download the slides from the webinar in the content menu to the left of this article - under attachments.

2. Decide which Zalando fulfilment centres, located in France (FR), Italy (IT), Poland (PL), Spain (ES), the Netherlands (NL), or Sweden (SE), you wish to enable.

Reach out to your known ZFS contact in case of any questions, or submit your query via the contact form. Please select the topic: ZFS and request type: General ZFS question from the drop down options.