Between 2012 and 2023, British online fashion retailer ASOS more than quadrupled its worldwide revenue and reached over 3.5 billion British pounds. In 2024, the company saw its annual revenue decrease to below the three billion pound mark. ASOS wins over the EU market ASOS’s revenue growth is paralleled with its expansion of its shopper base. Even though the UK remains to be the most lucrative region where ASOS generates the highest retail sales, the British fashion e-retailer increased its activity in the EU market at an impressive rate. From 2014 to 2023, ASOS recorded significant growth each year in retail sales across the European Union and stood out amongst other key markets. In the most recently recorded year, ASOS recorded nearly one billion pounds in retail sales in the EU. ASOS remains online-only In the current fashion retail environment where many high street retailers are going multichannel, ASOS still persists in its pureplay strategy. In 2023, asos.com net e-commerce sales in the UK put the multi-brand retailer in the same league with brick and mortar retailers’ online platforms with over 1.1 billion British pounds worth of net sales in the fashion segment.

Originally an online marketplace for things seen on television, hence the name ‘AsSeenOnScreen’, ASOS transitioned in the mid-2000s to an online retailer selling all types of apparel. It...

ASOS plc is one of the trailblazers of online fashion retailing. The UK-based e-commerce company especially picked up pace in the European Union, where retail sales peaked at over 1.1bn GBP in 2021. In the financial year 2024, ASOS saw a decrease in revenue across all regions. Online around the worldUnlike other e-commerce fashion retailers such as the German Zalando, which ventured into brick-and-mortar sales via outlet stores in Europe, ASOS sells only online and intends to stay that way. The UK-based company caters to the increasing demand coming from continental Europe and the other side of the Atlantic through fulfillment centers across Germany, France, and the U.S. ASOS brand globally strongEven though ASOS is a pure e-commerce seller, it occupies a unique position in the industry where it gets to play in the same league as the global big names. In 2023, alongside being one of the most popular online shops in the United Kingdom, ASOS had the second-highest share of voice next to established fashion brand sites that sell both online and offline. Rather than being an impediment, ASOS’ online-only strategy seems to be integral to its success.

In 2022, the brand value of British online fashion and cosmetics retailer ASOS stood at 974 million U.S. dollars, down roughly 65 percent from an estimated 2.8 billion in 2021. This fall took the brand from place 27 in 2021 to place 62 in 2022 in the ranking of most valuable UK brands.

ASOS: a global fashion heavyweight

ASOS is among the 10 most valuable apparel brands worldwide, competing with the likes of Nike, Adidas, and Zara. Initially catering to the UK market only, the London-based retailer has since expanded its online business and influence across the globe. In 2020, ASOS reported over 23 million active customers, many of whom were shopping from the European Union. In addition to soaring user numbers and ever-increasing sales figures, ASOS’s global revenue has also been skyrocketing over the past few years. The company generated more than 3.2 billion British pounds in 2020, a record sum that ASOS mainly contributed to its marketing efforts.

Pure play is here to stay

Unlike other e-commerce fashion giants such as Zalando, which opened outlet locations throughout Germany in the recent past, ASOS remains a pure play business. The company continues to sell its fashion and beauty products exclusively online, a digital focus that is playing off in today’s fast-paced retail landscape. In the year following the onset of the pandemic, the number of visits to asos.com has not fallen below 65 million per month, and in November 2020, visitor counts even surpassed the 100-million mark. ASOS’s target audience are tech-savvy 20-something fashion lovers who are more likely to shop online than any generation before them, and even though many consumers have started to return to brick-and-mortar stores, ASOS’s unique online sales approach will likely stand the test of time.

The online revenue of asos.de amounted to US$120m in 2020. Discover eCommerce insights, including sales development, shopping cart size, and many more.

This timeline displays the gross profit of ASOS for the financial years running 2012 to 2024. In the financial year 2024, the British online fashion retailer generated a gross profit of approximately 1.16 billion British pounds.

The online revenue of asos.fr amounted to US$282m in 2020. Discover eCommerce insights, including sales development, shopping cart size, and many more.

British online fashion retailer ASOS Plc invested 195 million British pounds in marketing in its latest financial year (September 2022 to August 2023). This figure marked an decrease of around 13 percent compared to the previous financial year.

ASOS

ASOS is an online fashion and beauty retailer headquartered in London. Founded in 2000 as a platform for celebrity clothing dupes, the company now sells a mix of over 90 thousand products from third-party brands and various in-house labels. Seeing that its expansive product portfolio caters to young adults with diverse fashion styles and budgets, it comes as no surprise that ASOS’s revenue and customer base have grown for over two decades. With a brand value of nearly a billion U.S. dollars, the e-retailer also ranks among the most popular retailers on the British internet.

An online marketing trailblazer

ASOS was voted the UK company with the most effective digital marketing strategy of 2020. Prior to that, the online retail business was also crowned ‘Brand of the Year’ at Marketing Week’s Masters Awards, outperforming household names such as Ikea and the Guardian. Companies from around the world look up to the British pure play fashion retailer for marketing inspiration, as ASOS effectively harnesses digital and social marketing channels with a focus on trends and inclusivity. In order to connect with audiences, the brand also launched the ASOS Insiders influencer program, which involves a network of content creators with different fashion styles promoting the brand’s products on sponsored social media accounts and the ASOS website. Customers can also use the hashtag #asseenonme to showcase their style and potentially be reposted by the brand.

Shein's market share in the United States more than doubled between March 2020 and March 2022, going from approximately 18 to 40 percent. This market share gain occurred at the expense of nearly all other fast fashion companies in the United States, as all except Zara saw their market share dwindle during that time period. Most notably, H&M's market share in the U.S. decreased ten percentage points between March 2020 and March 2022. By November 2022, Shein held 50 percent of the U.S. fast fashion market.

Fast fashion e-commerce

As the fast fashion industry continues to evolve, Shein is not the only e-commerce pure player disrupting the overall landscape. Companies such as ASOS and Zalando, for example, can turn out collections with remarkable speed, providing an edge against their brick-and-mortar competitors. From 2020 to 2022, net sales at ASOS.com are forecast to increase by more than two million U.S. dollars. Over the same time period, Zalando's net sales are forecast to increase by nearly one million U.S. dollars.

The rise of Shein

Shein may not be the only e-commerce pure player changing the landscape of the fast fashion industry, but it is definitely the most prominent one. According to estimates, the fast fashion giant has seen its revenue increase by more than 22 billion U.S. dollars since 2016. Maybe even more impressive is the fact that Shein.com was the second fastest growing e-commerce website in the world in 2022, and was the only fashion company to crack the list.

About You, the fashion e-commerce retailer based in Hamburg, Germany, generated over 934 million euros in revenues in the first half of 2022. In the 2021 financial year, the company reported a revenue of 1.7 billion euros, a significant increase from the 743 million reported in 2019.

A European leader in online fashion Alongside prominent brands such as Zalando, ASOS, and Boohoo, About You is one of the leading companies in the fashion e-commerce industry in Europe. In the first half of 2022, the company boasted a total of 12.3 million active customers, a figure that has steadily increased since the company went public in 2020. On average, shoppers who used About You for their fashion purchases spent about 55 euros per order, and the latest figures reveal that the retailer is only increasing in popularity, totaling nearly 37 million orders in the first half of 2022.

The personalization trend

About You’s rising popularity is not unfounded. The brand specializes in making their users’ shopping experience an extremely personalized one through tailored product listings based on shopper preferences. Personalized product recommendations were one of the top e-commerce innovations consumers across all generations were interested in in 2023.