Zalando Partner Day: AI Now Runs Product Content, But Sends Under 0.5% of Fashion Traffic

Zalando's annual Partner Day brought about 750 attendees to Berlin this fall, with brand representatives from Adidas, Calvin Klein, Levi's, Lagerfeld, Lacoste, Guess, New Balance, Nike, Next and Triumph in the seminar rooms. Zalando has run the event since 2014, usually as a showcase of platform capability. This year much of the programming went the other way, walking the room through where generative AI has and hasn't moved the numbers in fashion e-commerce.

The figure that set the tone came from Tarek Müller, managing director at About You, the German retailer Zalando acquired in July 2025. In his opening remarks, Müller put the question most brand operators in the room were already asking internally: does AI create awareness, convert traffic, or improve margin? Large language model tools such as ChatGPT and Claude currently send less than 0.5 percent of traffic to online fashion stores, he said, according to WWD's coverage of the event. Google and Meta remain the main drivers of traffic to online fashion.

Traffic: The Shift Is Real But Small

Many fashion brands have started optimizing for AI discovery on the assumption that conversational search will quickly erode Google and Instagram as shopping entry points. Müller's number says that shift is still marginal. LLM referrals may be growing, but at under half a percent of traffic they are not yet an acquisition channel that moves results for brands selling online.

Müller also pointed out that OpenAI has moved away from its AI shopping-assistant plans and toward selling advertising, a sign that the AI platforms themselves are treating chat as an ad channel before a commerce one. For brands, that argues for sequencing rather than abstention: don't move budget out of paid search and social on the strength of projected LLM referral growth.

Content Production Is Where the Economics Changed

Matthias Haase, Zalando's vice president for content solutions, told the audience that roughly 70 percent of the visual content running on the room-sized video panel behind him was AI-generated. Zalando and About You have both almost entirely closed the dedicated photo studios they once used for catalogue and product-page imagery. When Zalando's product studio closed, 90 positions were cut, and about 60 of those people moved to other roles in the company, Haase said.

The operating numbers behind that decision are the part worth copying. About You's SCAYLE Studios platform, now sold externally to more than 100 paying brands including the S.Oliver Group and the Betty Barclay Group, has cut production costs by roughly 90 percent and time-to-market by more than 95 percent at About You, which the company puts at more than 8 million euros a year in studio and editorial savings. In A/B tests cited by the company, AI-generated product imagery lifted gross merchandise value 9.2 percent and add-to-basket rates 5.1 percent against traditional studio shoots, and pairing one traditional studio set with several AI-generated sets per product raised GMV by up to 20 percent.

Haase was equally specific about the limits. Content built around real talent, such as brand ambassador Lily Collins, still goes through traditional production. The claim isn't that AI replaces creative work; it's that AI absorbs the repetitive, high-volume task of turning one flat product shot into the dozens of image and video variants a modern product detail page needs.

Speed was the other theme. Haase said even Zalando's fastest campaign turnaround, six to eight weeks, was too slow to catch a micro-trend. Zalando now has an AI agent crawl social media and deliver a report on the five most relevant micro-trends every morning; after it flagged an "arty fashion" trend around the Met Gala, Zalando launched a campaign the day after the gala.

What This Means for Brand Operators

For apparel brands deciding where technology dollars go next quarter, the Berlin presentations line up AI expectation against AI results on the same stage.

• Content production is the proven win. Brands carrying large SKU counts across multiple markets should treat AI-generated imagery as mature infrastructure, not a pilot. These tools sit alongside established Graphic Design solutions and increasingly overlap with 3D clothing design platforms such as CLO and Browzwear, which already use digital rendering to cut sampling rounds before a physical garment exists.
• Keep traffic strategy channel-agnostic. Don't defund Google Shopping or Meta campaigns on projected LLM referral growth. Track AI chat assistants as a low-volume emerging channel through your E-Commerce solutions analytics and fund them accordingly.
• Speed between systems is the next constraint. Zalando worked around its six-to-eight-week campaign cycle with an AI trend agent and AI content, but most brands' design, content and merchandising systems still hand work to each other in batches. That puts pressure on PLM solutions and trend forecasting tools to exchange data closer to real time.

AI matured fastest where the task was mechanical and repeatable, slowest where it depended on how people actually discover products. Budget allocation should follow the same curve rather than assuming every AI line item pays back on the same schedule.

Key Takeaways

• LLM tools including ChatGPT and Claude send under 0.5 percent of traffic to online fashion stores, About You's Tarek Müller told Zalando's Partner Day; Google and Meta remain the main traffic drivers.
• Zalando and About You have almost entirely closed their product photo studios. At About You, AI production cut costs about 90 percent, saves more than 8 million euros a year, and lifted GMV 9.2 percent in A/B tests.
• Put AI budget into content production workflows now, and monitor AI-driven shopping traffic as an emerging channel rather than over-funding it.