Is Amazon Europe’s Next Top Model?

The online shop Zalando has trampled brick-and-mortar fashion retailers—and earned a market value topping $9 billion—by offering stylish wares from the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Versace, and Adidas. Now, Zalando faces a rising internet threat of its own: Amazon.com. The online behemoth is picking up European market share as it signs up models and socialites and cozies up to such brands as Hugo Boss and Gucci. “We do more than people might appreciate,” says Susan Saideman, vice president for Amazon Fashion in Europe. Fashion “is very different from running a books business.”

Zalando is well-aware. Amazon now has 5.7 percent of the $42 billion online shoe and apparel market in Western Europe, according to researcher Euromonitor International—just behind Zalando’s 6.1 percent. Both have used high-fashion photo shoots, top models, and slick TV ads to pull almost even with leader Otto Group, a traditional mail-order catalog that has seen its share drop from 10 percent in 2011 to 6.2 percent this year.