On the way to being a sales billionaire

The online retailer Zooplus is growing faster than expected: on the basis of preliminary figures, Europe's leading Internet retailer for pet products has clearly exceeded its sales forecast of at least € 875 mio for 2016. The company increased its sales in the previous year by 28 per cent to € 908 mio. After adjustment for exchange rate effects, growth even lay at almost 2 per cent higher. 
According to Zooplus, they were once again able to achieve double-digit growth rates in all 30 national markets, whereby growth in Great Britain remained below expectations due to the weakness of the British pound against the euro.

Sales in the animal food sector even rose by 31 per cent compared to the previous year. The share of animal food in total turnover therefore rose to 82 per cent (2015: 80 per cent). With a sales growth of 26 per cent in new customer business and 29 per cent in existing customer business, both customer groups, according to Zooplus, contribute to long-term growth - the growth rate of new customer business thereby lies above the previous year's level (2015: 16 per cent). The excellent quality of new customers and the level of existing customers' loyalty is also expressed in the sales-related repurchasing rate, which at just over 92 per cent in 2016, again reached a very high level and only lay below the previous year (2015: 94 per cent) due to exchange rates, explains the company.
"Online retail continues to grow"
Dr. Cornelius Patt, chairman of the executive board at zooplus AG, comments on the successful sales development in 2016: "As things stand, compared to the previous year we were able to increase our active customer base of € 4 mio to over € 4.8 mio and turnover by almost € 200 mio to € 908 mio. More and more customers are recognising the advantages of online retailers and there's no sign of market saturation in sight". 

According to Patt, this can also be seen in the increase in growth rate in new customer business compared to the previous year. "This means that in 2016 too, we consistently continued to implement our growth strategy in the whole of Europe - in the fourth quarter alone we were able to make record sales of over € 250 mio in the quarter for the first time. At the same time our…