How did ABOUT YOU and SCAYLE turn commerce technology into a B2B business?

KEY TAKEAWAYS Summary by the editors

1. SCAYLE describes its commerce platform as founded to power ABOUT YOU and backed by Zalando, and lists clients including Levi Strauss & Co., Harrods, Deichmann and the s.Oliver group.
2. Zalando closed its acquisition of ABOUT YOU on 11 July 2025 and now runs SCAYLE as one of three B2B units alongside ZEOS and Tradebyte.
3. Zalando's B2B segment generated revenue of €1,091.3 million in 2025, up 14.6%, with adjusted EBIT rising to €53.9 million from €22.8 million.
4. In Q2 2026 Zalando's B2B revenue rose 27.6% to €334.7 million, with higher-margin SCAYLE software revenue cited as one driver of the margin increase to 12.2%.
5. SCAYLE STUDIOS, an AI content studio, reached more than 100 live brands within 2.5 months of launch, including ABOUT YOU, s.Oliver Group, Betty Barclay Group and Goldner Fashion, according to Zalando.

ABOUT YOU built its own e-commerce platform to run its fashion marketplace, then sold that technology to other retailers and brands under the name SCAYLE. After Zalando acquired ABOUT YOU in July 2025, SCAYLE became one of three units in Zalando's B2B business, and it now adds AI tools such as an AI content studio. The case shows how an in-house commerce stack can become a software and services revenue line.

What is SCAYLE and how is it related to ABOUT YOU?

SCAYLE is an enterprise commerce platform. On its website it describes itself as 'founded to power ABOUT YOU and backed by Zalando', with modules covering digital commerce, checkout, product information management (PIM), distributed order management, storefront, promotions, omnichannel and point of sale, search, analytics, payments and subscriptions.

The logic is simple: a retailer that has already built and stress-tested a platform for its own high-volume marketplace can offer the same platform to others. SCAYLE lists clients across fashion, sport and retail, including Levi Strauss & Co., Harrods, Snipes, Deichmann, Fielmann, Odlo and the s.Oliver group.

How does SCAYLE fit into Zalando's B2B strategy?

Zalando closed the acquisition of ABOUT YOU on 11 July 2025. In its 2025 annual results, published on 12 March 2026, Zalando described SCAYLE as one of three units in its B2B operating system, alongside ZEOS (logistics and services) and Tradebyte (connectivity for brands and retailers). Zalando said SCAYLE was expanding into the US and had signed a global partnership with Levi's, becoming the commerce platform for levi.com in the US, Canada and Europe.

The figures cover Zalando's whole B2B segment, not SCAYLE alone, and Zalando does not break out SCAYLE's revenue separately. In its Q2 2026 release, Zalando named ZEOS Fulfilment scale efficiencies and 'higher-margin SCAYLE software revenue' as the drivers of the margin increase. It also highlighted a Marks & Spencer partnership with a 22-market rollout and NEXT's expansion onto ABOUT YOU's marketplace.

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How is SCAYLE using AI?

The clearest AI product is SCAYLE STUDIOS, an AI-powered content studio for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. According to Zalando's Q2 2026 release, it reached more than 100 live brands within 2.5 months of launch, including ABOUT YOU, s.Oliver Group, Betty Barclay Group and Goldner Fashion. Zalando reports that it cuts content time-to-market by more than 95% and content costs by about 90%; these are company figures without published methodology.

SCAYLE's website also groups its AI under three headings (discoverability, differentiation and efficiency) and says SCAYLE STUDIOS can increase conversion by up to 6%. Again, this is a vendor claim. More broadly, Zalando reported that AI-generated product content at group level grew from near zero to 90% of content in one year, and that its Size & Fit AI avoided more than 8% of size-related returns.

• Product content: AI-generated imagery and copy at catalogue scale.
• Discovery: search and recommendations inside the commerce platform.
• Efficiency: shorter content production cycles and lower content costs.
• Shared infrastructure: tools first used by ABOUT YOU and Zalando are offered to third-party brands.

Why does this matter for brands and wholesale teams?

For fashion brands that sell through wholesale, marketplaces and their own sites, the ABOUT YOU and SCAYLE model changes who supplies commerce infrastructure. The same group can be a retail customer (through Zalando and ABOUT YOU's marketplaces), a logistics provider (ZEOS), a connectivity layer (Tradebyte) and a software vendor (SCAYLE). That bundling can reduce integration work, but it also concentrates dependency on one group.

AI raises the stakes on that question. AI content and discovery tools are only as good as the product data they are fed, and a platform that hosts both content generation and transaction data gains a view of what sells. Brands should review data ownership, portability and usage terms as carefully as they review features.

What are the risks and limits of this model?

Retailer-born platforms carry a reputational challenge: some brands may be reluctant to run their direct channel on technology owned by a marketplace that also competes for the same end customer. Integration after an acquisition also takes time; Zalando says ABOUT YOU synergies are ahead of plan and that it now expects its targeted €100 million in synergies in 2028, a year earlier than planned, but these remain forecasts.

On AI specifically, the published efficiency figures (time-to-market, cost and conversion) come from the company and its vendor marketing. Brands evaluating similar tools should run their own controlled tests, check image accuracy against physical samples and keep human approval for product content.

How does AI support the wider Zalando and ABOUT YOU platform?

SCAYLE's AI tools sit inside a group that tests AI at consumer scale first. In its 2025 results Zalando reported that AI logistics models improved the precision of real-time delivery promises by 22 percentage points, that 'matchmaking' AI drove a 13% increase in items added to bags, and that the Zalando Assistant reached 6 million users. Zalando also said it is one of two European launch partners for Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, which supports shopping through AI chatbots, and projected that agentic commerce could reach up to 15% of online retail by 2030.

The relevance for B2B customers is that tools proven on Zalando's and ABOUT YOU's own marketplaces can later be packaged for third parties, as SCAYLE STUDIOS was. The caveat is the same as for any company-reported metric: the figures describe Zalando's environment, data volumes and assortment, and results for a mid-sized brand on its own site may differ.

Read also

What is fashion wholesale? How brands sell collections to retailers

What can other fashion companies learn?

1. Internal platforms can become external products if they are built for scale and multi-tenancy from the start.
2. B2B services can lift margins: Zalando links its B2B margin increase partly to software revenue.
3. AI content tools are a practical entry point for B2B AI because results (time and cost per asset) are measurable.
4. Brands buying from retail groups should negotiate data rights and exit options explicitly.

Frequently asked questions

What is SCAYLE?

SCAYLE is an enterprise commerce platform that grew out of ABOUT YOU's in-house technology. It offers modules such as checkout, PIM, order management, storefront and search, and it is now part of Zalando's B2B business.

Who owns ABOUT YOU and SCAYLE?

Zalando completed its acquisition of ABOUT YOU on 11 July 2025. SCAYLE operates as one of Zalando's three B2B units alongside ZEOS and Tradebyte.

What is SCAYLE STUDIOS?

SCAYLE STUDIOS is an AI-powered content studio for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce. Zalando reported that it reached more than 100 live brands within 2.5 months of launch, including s.Oliver Group and Betty Barclay Group.

Which brands use SCAYLE?

SCAYLE lists clients including Levi Strauss & Co., Harrods, Snipes, Deichmann, Fielmann, Odlo and the s.Oliver group. Zalando says SCAYLE became the commerce platform for levi.com in the US, Canada and Europe.

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