Anna-Maria Eich talks about shifts in buying and sustainable buying for Zalando

We have caught up with Anna-Maria Eich, Team Lead for our Lifestyle buying team, to talk about the shifts and changes that occur in buying and the effect the COVID pandemic has had on buyers’ work.

Anna-Maria, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your story at Zalando?

I have been working at Zalando for five years. Since I started working at 23, I have always been a buyer. Before joining Zalando, I was at Peek & Cloppenburg, one of Germany’s biggest retail chains, for four years. I have an MA degree in International Business, and what I appreciate about my profession is how it is equal parts creative and analytical. Currently, I am Team Lead for the lifestyle buying team responsible for heritage denim brands such as Levi’s, American heritage brands like Gap and Abercrombie, and sportswear giants like Nike and Adidas.

And what attracted you to Zalando, specifically?

The perspective of working at a company that gives you so much freedom, helps you grow and doesn’t curb your creativity. At Zalando, you actually feel like you have the opportunity to help shape the industry. And my colleagues make my work even more enjoyable — we are a bunch of really, truly cool people who inspire each other — there’s so much knowledge sharing and such a great feeling of a community.

And the brands that you’re currently working with — have you always strived to work with them?

I have always worked in women’s textile, you can say it’s my passion. I have always wanted to work with our biggest accounts and forge solid partnerships with the industry’s big players. We can achieve so much working together with our big partners. Throughout my career, I have always been very open to trying out new things and new roles. The only thing that has been a principle matter for me was to stay in womenswear. However, I think every side of our business has something exciting to offer — if something else comes up within Zalando, I wouldn’t mind trying it.

What are the main challenges in your current work and the most exciting aspects of it?

I think the most exciting thing about working here is collaborating with true industry experts — in our high-achieving team, the sense of making an impact is real. It’s exciting to see great ideas come to life, it’s exciting to see people develop continuously. Many of the collaborations we have launched with big industry players are simply thrilling! Of course, there are challenges, too. The sheer amount of things that we do, the amount of possibilities we have — they can be overwhelming. There’s so much you can do, but staying focused and prioritising is essential. Another challenge is the current home office regime. We need to re-define the work-life balance, while preserving our healthy team spirit, staying optimistic, keeping good communication, and keeping up the good work.

I guess normally you would travel a lot, which is not happening now.

As a Team Lead, I do not travel as much as the rest of the buying team. They, of course, have felt stranded. But I feel like we have found really good ways to maintain communication with our partners. Of course we still have to find new ways of working, and sometimes it can be not that easy to work digitally.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the fashion industry has been learning so much recently.

Of course! There is a big shift happening in the industry. And we have to continuously keep learning and adjusting when it comes to being inclusive and sustainable. I love it that we, as a company, can drive positive change across the industry and work with our partners to push for more sustainable, body-positive, inclusive collections.

And speaking about sustainability, has Zalando’s new dedication to sustainability affected your work with the partners?

It has. It has affected the way my team is buying — we ask more questions about the things we order, we champion transparency and accountability. And it is empowering that we take an active part in changing the industry for the better — when we buy 10,000 sustainably produced items of one design, it sends a signal across the industry, encouraging producers to make clothes responsibly.

If you could give a piece of advice to someone who is thinking about applying for a job in your team, what would that be?

For me, it is always important to see an entrepreneurial approach and out-of-the-box thinking. It’s essential that you constantly challenge yourself and ask questions, and don’t take things for granted. Apart from that, you need to be aware of the fact that we are a platform, which means that we need to take into account Zalando’s different parts and stay connected with them. We need to keep connection to marketing, to the studios and our platform services. So, in the end we are not just looking for good buyers, we are also looking for good platform managers. We need people who are able to inspire others, who think like entrepreneurs and have an entrepreneurial mindset.

If you’re interested in our Buying and Merchandising teams, check out our open positions here.