Zalando's New AI Agent Will Sell Other Retailers' Goods as Discounts Squeeze Margins

Zalando, which moved 4.54 billion euros of goods through its platform in the quarter ended Sept. 30, will let an AI agent finish purchases on other retailers’ sites from 2027, ending the pilot’s redirect.

Discounting is already thinning what Zalando earns on its own shelves: the gross margin in its consumer business fell 0.7 percentage points, to 41%. The agent will add baskets of goods Zalando does not stock, set against a consumer margin that discounts are already thinning.

What will the agent do?

The offering is called Zalando Extended. In the pilot, customers in selected markets find Westwing products in Zalando search results, then land on Westwing’s site to buy. From 2027, Zalando expects customers to complete those purchases in its app through the agent. Zalando promises partner stores that they will not need to rebuild their technology or logistics to join.

Zalando also sells ads to its partners: retail media revenue rose almost 18% in the quarter, to 2% of consumer sales value, and partner stores are to be able to promote products through ads in the app.

Does it build on what Zalando already runs?

Yes, but the numbers belong to the existing Zalando Assistant, a chat tool for shoppers, and not to the new agent. More than 22 million people have used the assistant in 2026, and customers who used it were twice as likely to complete a purchase, CFO Anna Dimitrova said. Agentic traffic remained below 1% of total traffic, she said, but is rising.

Why sell other stores’ goods?

Discounts, mostly on sneakers, pulled the consumer margin down. Dimitrova called the dip temporary and expects improvement in the fourth quarter and a broadly flat gross margin for the full year.

Partners already supply 33.6% of consumer sales value, 2.9 percentage points more than a year earlier, and Zalando wants 40% to 50% by 2028. JPMorgan analysts cited “ongoing structural risk from agentic commerce development,” according to a published report.

Which of a retailer’s checkouts would a customer’s own agent complete before the customer ever reached the store’s site?