About You (company)

About You GmbH (stylized as ABOUT YOU) is a German fashion online retailer based in Hamburg.[2] Founded in 2014 as a subsidiary of Otto Group, in 2018 its status changed to that of a portfolio company due to a shift in the shareholder balance.[3] The retailer is active in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. The private label Edited is also sold in traditional retail stores.

About You GmbH
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH)
IndustryE-commerce
Founded2014
FounderTarek Muller
Hannes Wiese
HeadquartersHamburg, Germany
Area served
Parts of Europe
Key people
Tarek Müller, Sebastian Betz, Hannes Wiese
Revenue461 Mio. Euro (2018/19)[1]
Number of employees
>600[2]
Websitewww.aboutyou.com

About You focuses primarily on personalization and influencer marketing.[4][5] In 2018, the company was ranked as the fifth largest online fashion retailers in the country.[6] It is also Hamburg’s first non-listed digital startup company with a company valuation of more than one billion US dollars."[7]

History

About You was launched in Germany on May 5th 2014. The company emerged from Collins (an allusion to American management expert Jim Collins and his book "Built to last")[8], an e-commerce project financed and overseen by the Otto Group, which invested a three-digit million amount in the project.[9][10] Founders and managers were Benjamin Otto, Tarek Müller, Sebastian Betz und Hannes Wiese. Benjamin Otto ist the son of Otto Group chairman Michael Otto; he left Collins in 2015 to become managing partner at the Otto Group.[11][12] Hannes Wiese was the former head of the Otto Group's strategy department, while Betz and Müller were independent entrepreneurs whose former companies were acquired by the Otto Group.[13][14] Before starting Collins, Tarek Müller had already attained some prominence in Germany as a young serial entrepreneur, having developed his first income-generating website at the age of 13.[15][16][17]

About You webshops were launched in Austria and Switzerland (2015), the Netherlands and Belgium (2017), Poland and the Czech Republic (2018), Hungary, Slovakia and Romania (2019).[18]

In 2016, the investment firms SevenVentures, a subsidiary of the German media company ProSiebenSat.1 Media, and German Media Pool bought a minority stake in the company. Three years after its founding, the investors valued About You at more than 300 million euros.[19] In July 2018, the Danish company Heartland A/S, parent of the Bestseller clothing company, acquired a 29 % stake in About You.[20] In this context, About You was valued at over one billion dollars, making the online retailer the first Hamburg-based unicorn.[21][3] Otto, though still owning the largest share of the company, now held less than 50 %, and About You was deconsolidated.[1]

Since November 2017, About You has offered its e-commerce infrastructure (software for webshops), an in-house development, under the name "About You Cloud" as a licensed product to other online retailers.[22]

Business and marketing specifics

About You has implemented a cross-channel marketing approach with the smartphone app as its most important sales channel, generating 75 percent of the company's revenue.[23][2] The About You shop currently (2019) offers more than 250,000 articles from over 1,200 brands. There have been a number of exclusive collection deals, e.g. a limited Disney collection and a Nike collection in 2019.[2][24][25] The shop's target customer base are women and men between the ages of 18 and 49, but it has also started (in 2019) selling children's clothes.[3]

The retailer's own brand Edited is sold via the webshop of the same name as well as in five exclusive stores in Germany and Austria and by more than 100 retail partners in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic.

Influencer marketing

The company cooperates with more than 100 local influencers (2019), many of whom feature in themed photo collections on the shop's home page presenting fashion styles they have chosen from the shop's product range.[26] Select influencers get to develop their own collections.[24][27] Among the prominent cooperators are Stefanie Giesinger and Lena Gercke.

Personalization

About You's shop's logo changes from "About You" to "About <customer's name>" after login. The webshop and the app generate personalized feeds and tailored product suggestions for customers based on former purchases, likes of brands, people and product groups and purchase probabilities of people with similar profiles.[28][29][30] In 2017, About You has been described as having "the technological edge in terms of personalization"[31] over Zalando and other German online retailers.

Events and TV

Since 2017, About You organizes the About You Awards, a yearly award show that honors popular influencers. The show is broadcast on TV by ProSieben, Germany's second largest privately owned television network. [32]

Starting on April 20th 2019, an afternoon TV-Show named "All About You – das Fashion Duell", with the company as official title sponsor, has run for ten episodes, also on ProSieben.[33][34] It was succeeded by "Style your Star – It's About You", another sponsored afternoon format, running from June 29th till August 31st 2019.[35]

In 2019, About You has also started a collaboration with the organizers of a beach music festival, Pangea, which was re-branded as the "About You Pangea Festival".[36][37]

Awards

About You has been awarded the Internet World Business B2B trade journal's Shop Award for the best German online shops for four consecutive years from 2015 to 2018.[38][39][40][41] In 2017, the company won the EHI Retail Institute's Retail Technology Award in the category "Best Customer Experience".[42]

In 2019, the "About You Cloud" (the proprietary webshop infrastructure software that the company licenses to other online retailers) has received the "Deutscher Exzellenzpreis" ("German Excellence Award") in the category "Cloudservices".[43]

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References
  1. "Otto Group remains on growth track despite difficult market conditions (Press release)". Otto Group Homepage. 28 March 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  2. "About us". About You Homepage. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  3. Weishaupt, Georg; Krejger, Gilbert (20 July 2018). "Online fashion startup About You becomes a unicorn". Handelsblatt. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  4. "Discover our brand marketing and content depertment". About You Homepage. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  5. Neerman, Pauline (11 October 2017). "Fashion platform About You launches in the Netherlands and Belgium". Retail Detail. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  6. "Umsatzstärkste Online-Shops im Bekleidungs-Segment in Deutschland 2018" [Largest online shops by revenue in the German apparel sector]. Statista (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  7. "Otto Group: ABOUT YOU becomes Hamburg's first unicorn". www.ottogroup.com. Retrieved 2020-07-08.
  8. Fleing, Elke (11 May 2014). "Otto Group-Projekt Collins lüftet all seine Geheimnisse" [Otto Group project Collins discloses all of its secrets]. Deutsche Startups (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  9. "Otto Group reveals its ecommerce project Collins". Ecommerce News. 5 May 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  10. "Collins-Internetprojekt der Otto-Group zieht Jahresbilanz" [Otto Group's Collins internet project takes stock of its first business year]. Welt (in German). 11 May 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  11. "Benjamin Otto joins the Otto Group (press release)". Otto Group Homepage. 13 September 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  12. "Benjamin Otto to become Managing Partner at Otto Group (press release)". Otto Group Homepage. 20 April 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  13. "Otto Group acquires NetImpact and Creative-Task digital service agencies (press release)". Otto Group Homepage. 17 June 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  14. "Management Board". About You Homepage. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  15. "In conversation with Tarek Müller, co-founder and co-CEO of About You". The Restless CMO. 19 February 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  16. Novotny, Rudi (19 October 2018). "Häufig fehlt der Mut – Interview with Tarek Müller" [Frequently, there is a lack of courage]. Zeit (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  17. Vorkötter, Uwe (19 December 2018). "Horizont Award: Das sind die Männer und Frauen des Jahres 2018" [Horizont award: The men and women of the year 2018]. Horizont (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  18. "Markets & Expansion". About You Homepage. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  19. "Focus on growth: About You attracts investment from SevenVentures and media investor German Media Pool (press release)". About You Homepage. 1 September 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  20. Neerman, Pauline (22 August 2018). "Bestseller takes 29 % stake in About You". Retail Detail. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  21. "About You becomes Hamburg's first unicorn – Heartland A/S joins the fashion-tech start-up as a new investor (press release)". About You Homepage. 19 July 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  22. "About You offers its proprietary e-commerce infrastructure as an API solution (press release)". About You Homepage. 23 November 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  23. "About You und Zalando – Die Tech-Analyse" [About You and Zalando – The Tech Analysis]. e-tailment (in German). 27 November 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  24. "About You lands another brand coup: online fashion retailer signs a strategic partnership with Disney (press release)" (PDF). About You Homepage. 7 February 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  25. Oberschür, Rüdiger (29 January 2019). "About You lanciert Nike-Kampagne mit Stefanie Giesinger" [About You launches Nike campaign with Stefanie Giesinger]. Fashion Network (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  26. Maar, Stephanie (2018). "Interview mit Melanie Hartel (About You Blogger & Influencer-Relations)" [Interview with Melanie Hartel, About You Blogger & Influencer Relations]. Fansegmentation und Fanpsychologie: Bedürfnisse, Persönlichkeitsmerkmale und Prädispositionen hoch involvierter Fans [Fan segmentation and fan psychology: Needs, personal traits and predispositions of highly involved supporters] (in German). Mannheim: Nomos. ISBN 978-3-8487-3669-0.
  27. "About You und Lena Gercke intensivieren Zusammenarbeit mit "LeGer Basics" (press release)" [About You and Lena Gercke step up their cooperation with "LeGer Basics"]. About You Homepage (in German). 8 October 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  28. "Every catch your perfect match: aboutyou.nl is launching today (press release)". Otto Group Homepage. 10 October 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  29. Krause, Florian. "AboutYou Data-Driven Personalization with ArangoDB". Arango DB. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  30. Beck, Gabriel (19 August 2016). "17 Best Practices für Personalisierung im Web" [17 Best Practices for online personalization]. Konversionskraft (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  31. Schröder, Miriam; Weishaupt, Georg (12 June 2017). "Artificial intelligence is Zalando's perfect match". Handelsblatt. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  32. "About You Awards 2018: Biggest social media award show of the year celebrates its TV premiere and is market leader among 14- to 29-year-old women with a 27.3 percent share (press release)". About You Homepage. 4 May 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  33. Campillo-Lundbeck, Santiago (8 April 2019). "About you baut Content Marketing mit weiterer Show auf ProSieben aus" [About You extends its content marketing with another show on ProSieben]. Horizont (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  34. "ProSieben startet die neue Show 'All About You – Das Fashion Duell'" [New Show 'All About You – Das Fashion Duell' starting on ProSieben]. Fashion United (in German). 4 April 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  35. ""Style your Star – It's About You": Welches Styling-Team kreiert für Nikeata Thompson, Shermine Shahrivar, Eva Padberg und Larissa Marolt den perfekten Look?" ["Style your Star – It’s About You": Which styling team will create the perfect look for Nikeata Thompson, Shermine Shahrivar, Eva Padberg and Larissa Marolt?]. ProSieben (in German). 2 July 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  36. "Real Experiences Rather Than Just Classic Marketing: The Fashion Online Shop Is Creating an Innovative Festival Concept and Organizing the ABOUT YOU PANGEA FESTIVAL for the First Time (press release)" (PDF). About You Homepage. 12 February 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  37. "Nach Einstieg von Modehändler: So verändert About You das Pangea Festival" [After the fashion retailer got on board: How About You has changed the Pangea Festival]. Ostsee-Zeitung (in German). 22 August 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  38. "About You räumt Hauptpreis "Best of Show" ab" [About You scores main prize "Best of Show"]. Internet World Business (in German). 23 March 2015. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  39. Gaitzsch, Martin (1 March 2016). "Business Shop-Award 2016: das sind die Gewinner" [Business Shop-Award 2016: The winners]. Internet World Business (in German). Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  40. "Douglas awarded best multichannel retailer in Germany (About You Best Online Pureplayer)". Ecommerce News. 8 March 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  41. "These are the best online stores in Germany". Ecommerce News. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  42. "Award Winners 2017". EHI Retail Institute. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  43. "Preisträger 2019 – Cloud Services". Deutscher Exzellenzpreis. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
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