Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) Germany is now working together with Zalando within the framework of the Connected Retail program. The partnership enables URW to connect to Europe’s largest online fashion platform, reach new customers through Zalando and improve inventory turnover at participating brands.
The cooperation has been in planning for a longer time, but has now been brought to a quick conclusion due to the considerable challenges for stationary retail caused by the Corona crisis. As a result, stationary retailers in the shopping centres operated by URW are quickly provided with an additional sales channel for their goods. URW is the first shopping centre operator to cooperate with Zalando in the Connected Retail program. The company will initially assume the role of intermediary and sales partner in this extensive network of online and offline retail. An expansion of the partnership is already planned.
“Due the infrastructural connection of our centres and their urban catchment areas, we already offer our retail rental partners ideal access to their customers in the physical world. Owing to the cooperation with Zalando, we now want to provide our tenants with even better support in reaching customers in the digital world and thereby opening up our own offering to an even larger target group. Together with Zalando, we have planned the strategic partnership in detail over the past few months and have now decided to conclude the talks quickly – in particular due to the Corona crisis and the massive and existential restrictions for brick-and-mortar retail. We can start immediately with affiliating brands from the shopping centres operated by URW to Connected Retail.The system is already functional at the present time without opening the shops and is fully within the scope of the regulations of the public authorities,” says Andreas Hohlmann, Managing Director Germany at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.
