Dear audience, also this year, the present board members, Robert Gentz and David Schneider, will jointly report on the past financial year 2021. I now hand over to Robert Gentz and David Schneider.
Dear shareholders, good morning. On behalf of the entire management board, I would like to welcome you cordially to our annual general meeting 2022. It's nice that you have again joined us virtually this year. During the next approximately 25 minutes or so, David and I will talk about the following topics. We'll be looking back on the financial year 2021. We will talk about our strategy, and we will look ahead together at the year 2022. Let's start with the business year 2021. 2021 was another successful year on our journey to becoming the starting point for fashion, the first port of call for fashion in Europe. I can tell you, we have achieved and exceeded our goals for 2021, making it a record year for Zalando. First, we gained around 10 million new customers.
We also launched in six new markets: Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. We now serve almost all of Europe. Secondly, we have significantly expanded our platform. Our partner business accounted for 30% of the gross merchandise volume in the fashion store during the fourth quarter of last year. Third, we've achieved progress towards our sustainability goals. We achieved almost 22% of our gross merchandise volume through our sustainability assortment. In September of 2021, we were included in the leading German stock index DAX. We are really proud of what the Zalando team has achieved over the past 13 years. We very well remember the time where we sold flip-flops out of a basement, so we are very, very proud of having an extremely dedicated team that showed courage and entrepreneurial spirit, and we were jointly able to write this startup history.
Today, we're a pan-European platform with over 48 million customers, and the really big opportunities are still ahead of us. We are convinced of this, and we are aligning our strategy accordingly. As we move forward, we will look at our three strategic pillars in more detail. Let's first look at the figures. There are good reasons for our strong financial result in 2021. Among them is Zalando's traction as the starting point for fashion and the loyalty of our customers, who shopped more online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our focus continues to be on growth. We've significantly expanded our reach, and I'm really proud that by the end of 2021, we reached over 48 million active customers in 23 countries. That's 25% more in comparison to the previous year.
In 2021, our gross merchandise volume grew to EUR 14.3 billion, which is an increase of 24%. We were able to grow by EUR 3.7 billion. In 2021, we also exceeded the EUR 10 billion turnover mark for the first time. I believe that's a huge milestone in the 13th year since Zalando was founded. Let's talk about our profitability. Thanks to this record turnover, we have reached a healthy level of profitability. We've increased our adjusted EBIT to EUR 468 million. This corresponds to a margin of 4.5% of revenue. At this point, I would like to refer to Zalando SE's retained earnings, which amounted to EUR 508,086,479.96 in the past financial year.
As in the previous years, the management board and supervisory board proposed to carry forward the balance sheet profit of Zalando SE for the past financial year, 2021, in full to new account. We are a growth company, and we continue to invest into the future. We do not plan to pay a dividend either now or in the coming years. Earnings will therefore be reinvested in the business as much as possible in the coming years. Our success in 2021 is also due to the commitment of our employees from over 140 nations and the passion that they put into the work for our customers every day. Jointly, we've achieved the biggest growth and the biggest earnings since the beginning. Thank you very much to our entire team, which is really sticking together in all of the situations.
Moving on to the foundation of our success, our strategy. At our Capital Markets Day 2021, we informed you about our medium-term plans. One topic is clearly in focus for us, our vision to be the starting point for fashion in Europe. This means we want Zalando to be the starting point for anyone looking for fashion online, for inspiration, for an outfit, or for beauty and lifestyle products. We have everything in fashion and lifestyle in one app from our warehouses, from our partners or from the many stationary businesses and retail stores that we have in Europe. It is faster. There's no way of being faster and more comfortable than with us. We have the entire world of fashion in one app, but it is tailor-made, personally relevant because of a combination of fast learning and human curation.
Our team works every day towards making this purchasing experience more inspiring and more entertaining. We've already said it. We have ambitious goals for 2025. We're taking the decisions today for tomorrow's success, and in doing so, we are focusing on three strategic pillars. First, we strengthen our customer relationships. It is our goal to play an increasingly relevant role in the lives of our customers. Second, we offer our brand partners a digital platform, thus positioning Zalando as a direct-to-consumer sales channel. In doing so, we are shaping the future of shopping together with our partners. Third, we invest in a sustainable platform because we consider sustainability to be an opportunity. We are firmly convinced that this will make us more successful in the long term.
It is our goal to achieve a gross merchandise volume of more than EUR 30 billion to increase the share of our partner business and the total business to more than 50% and to become a sustainable fashion platform with a net positive impact on people and the planet. Now we will address all three strategic pillars. Let's first talk about our customers. We basically offer fashion. That's what we started with, and more than 90% of our customers buy fashion from us. Over the course of the years, Zalando was expanded to play an even bigger role in the lives of our customers. For example, the shopping club, Zalando Lounge, our design offers and our pre-owned and beauty segments. Across all of these offerings, it is important for us to make the purchasing experience easy and convenient.
We automatically suggest outfits and size recommendations. We want to strengthen the customer relationships and create loyalty, and this pays off. 60% of our gross merchandise volume comes from active customers who spend more than 500 EUR per year with us. A big share of the annual expenditure is going towards fashion and lifestyle. This shows that we are able to create deep customer relationships and play a relevant role for our customers. We focus the wishes of our customers. We invest a lot of time to deeply understand their needs, and it is our goal to understand and reflect in our app the wishes of our customers. This is the basic idea that guides our offers from selection to the purchasing and shopping experience. One example of how we are doing this is beauty.
Big brands like Estée Lauder, L'Oréal or Coty are now part of our assortment. Furthermore, through our partnership with Sephora, we have expanded our selection to over 25,000 products from 400 brands. As a result, our progress in beauty is reflected in the strong growth of over 100% year-on-year. We're not just making our offerings better. We also bring our different offerings closer together and to make them even more relevant for our customers. One good example of this is Zalando Plus. With our member program, Zalando Plus, we bring together the best of Zalando. Our members benefit from even faster deliveries and early access to exclusive offers. This allows them to shop for the best offers before everyone else can. For this, they currently invest an annual fee of EUR 15 in Germany.
At the beginning of this year, we passed a milestone of more than 1 million Zalando Plus members. That was in March. It's a big success. Zalando Plus is now available in four countries. Besides Germany, it's also been rolled out in Italy, France, and the Netherlands. The program pays off. A Plus member visits Zalando twice as often and spends 3x as much as a non-Plus customer.
With that, we come to the second part of our strategy, the platform business. Our partner brands contribute a great deal to the shopping experience at Zalando. We want our customers to experience the most exciting brands, the most interesting items, and the most relevant stories and backgrounds. We're able to put this together in the way we do because we create experiences across many brands and trends. When we look at the order history of our customers, they buy an average of 18 different brands from us. And also, half of our orders contain more than one brand. We're working to creating an environment that is increasingly attractive for both customers and our partner brands. Through our partnerships, we enable our customers to shop relevant brands. Brands that people are willing to stand in line for are also among them.
We're also massively expanding our assortment with more than 5,800 brands, we now offer an almost limitless assortment. Customers can also interact directly with their favorite brand. Already 14 million Zalando customers have become brand fans. They stay up to date and receive offers and inspiration from their favorite brands. Finally, we share common values with our partners, such as diversity and inclusion. Values that are becoming increasingly important, especially for customers. We want to promote them with our partners. The right environment for brands and strong values in turn attract more strong brands. With Zalando, we've created a place for our brand partners where they can reach over 48 million customers digitally. We help our brand partners to do this through technology and marketing, through our infrastructure, through our capabilities. Let me give you three examples.
First, brands want to be where the customer is, and increasingly with a direct sales strategy. We also speak of direct-to-consumer. That is the direct sale of products to end customers. With our partner program and Connected Retail, we support them in this. In 2021, our partner business grew by more than 75%. We achieved around 30% of our gross merchandise volume in the fashion store through partners in the fourth quarter. This puts us on track to achieve half of our gross merchandise volume through our partner program by 2025. Second, partners can use our logistics network to reach customers in all of our markets. This means they do not have to invest in their own infrastructure. The number of items shipped and available via Zalando Fulfillment Solutions has increased by more than 100% compared to the previous year.
This means that our logistics are used for 55% of partner program items. By 2025, we want to fulfill 75% of all partner program items through our own logistics infrastructure. Thirdly, we enable partners to target their audience by using our data and reach. This might be to increase their sales and to raise awareness of their brands. On the other hand, Zalando Marketing Services also shows very strong growth of more than 90%. By the end of 2021, Zalando Marketing Services sales accounted for around 2% of the gross merchandise volume of our fashion store. This is strong evidence that more and more partners are adopting our marketing services. Our long-term goal is for Zalando Marketing Services revenue to be equivalent to 3%-4% of the fashion store's gross merchandise volume.
Dear shareholders, the strong progress in all these dimensions shows that we're on the right track to achieving our platform targets for 2025. Now we've already talked a lot about growth and success. However, there's still one crucial building block missing. In order to win the hearts of our customers in the long run and to fulfill our social responsibility as a company, we are aligning our business in a sustainable way. It's our goal to become a net positive impact company in the long run. This means that we give back more to society and the environment than we take. This is a truly ambitious goal. To achieve it, we're working with our partners to find solutions. So that the whole industry can further evolve, we need to develop new solutions with others and invest in new technologies.
With the reach we have, we're in the best position to create a sustainable effect also beyond our own business. We're very confident in our efforts, and we believe that we're on the right track. Let me also be frank here. There are big challenges to overcome and solutions to find to make this commitment work on a larger scale. Let me give you one hands-on example. Of course, our top priority is to ensure that products reach our customers safely and undamaged. At the same time, we want to reduce our packaging volume to a minimum. In particular, we want to avoid single-use plastic. These are the steps we're taking to achieve this. 99% of our packaging materials are recyclable already. This means that our customers can dispose of the packaging responsibly.
By the end of 2021, we will reduce the use of plastic shipping bags to 37%. We're doing this by switching to paper bags. However, one long-term challenge for the industry remains. That's the so-called poly bags. You probably know them. They are the thin plastic sleeves that enclose products. They're used by most brands that protect the products. What are we doing? We are testing new materials and reusable options. With regard to packaging material, this will be a major focus in the future, but there's still a lot more to do. Those who know us know we like a challenge, and this is just a small sample of the efforts we're currently making in this regard. It is very motivating for us to see how passionately all our teams are working on ideas and how deeply sustainability is already anchored in all our projects.
This leads us to our last point, our outlook. Let's first talk about the start of 2022 before we get to the outlook. Here's the key figures compared to the first quarter of 2021. Gross merchandise volume in the first quarter of 2022 was 1% above the level in the same quarter last year. Our revenues were down 1.5% to EUR 2.2 billion, and the adjusted EBIT was -EUR 51.8 million. The result in the first quarter of 2022 was, on the one hand, to be expected, but on the other hand, it is not a result with which we are really satisfied. What factors have driven this result? There are two main reasons I'd like to briefly address. Firstly, the first quarter of 2022 was marked by macroeconomic influences.
Consumer sentiment dropped significantly due to inflation and the war in Ukraine, even lower than at the beginning of the pandemic. In addition to that, industry-wide bottlenecks in the supply chain weighed on the first quarter results. Secondly, we're comparing this quarter to an exceptional first quarter of 2021. Our strong growth in the year-ago quarter was accelerated by tailwinds from the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid increase in people's demand for digital products, also driven by the year-wide lockdowns. By quarter one, 2022, things had largely returned to normal around brick-and-mortar fashion retail. But if we take a look at the two-year comparison, then we see an average growth rate of 25.3% in gross merchandise volume. If we take a look at the strategic key figures that are important for us, we've made great progress for the long-term success of Zalando.
The growth in the number of our customers has developed positively. We continue to make good progress in strengthening our customer relationships, and the partner business is also growing. Let's now take a look at the current business year. After the strong growth in 2021, our business has normalized as the pandemic has subsided. We're also facing a challenging macroeconomic environment that's become significantly more volatile in recent months. Uncertainty about the extent and duration of key macroeconomic drivers remains high. Against this backdrop, with the presentation of the first quarter results a fortnight ago, we confirmed our forecast for the 2022 financial year at the lower end in terms of the growth in gross merchandise volume, revenue growth, and adjusted EBIT. We cannot completely detach ourselves from the current market developments and uncertainties remain.
However, we're confident that our platform model, our agile business management, and focus on cost efficiency will enable us to successfully meet the challenges ahead. Finally, we would like to introduce you to a new management team with whom we're driving this strategy. We're pleased to announce that Sandra Dembeck joined our executive board team as CFO on March 1st, 2022. David Schröder has taken over the newly created position of the Chief Operating Officer. Jim Freeman already moved from CTO to the newly created position of the Chief Business and Product Officer last year. Astrid Arndt took on the role of Chief People Officer in April 2021. Together with our broad leadership team, we'll do everything we can to achieve our long-term goals. David said it in the beginning, 2021 was another year on our journey to be the starting point for fashion in Europe.
I would like to emphasize again at the end of our presentation, 2022 is another year to bring us closer to our long-term goal. We're pleased about the great progress we've made in recent years. In 2021, the company grew significantly faster than expected. This brought Zalando a good deal closer to its medium-term growth target of achieving more than EUR 30 billion in gross merchandise volume by 2025. We're consistently focusing on the implementation of strategic initiatives in 2022 to become more relevant to our customers and to build stronger relationships with them, to create significant growth opportunities for our partners, and to become a sustainable fashion platform with a net positive impact on people on the planet.
Our goal is to create an even more inspiring shopping experience for our customers and long-term growth for you, dear shareholders, for our company, for our employees, and for our partners. Finally, to conclude, let me add a legally required comment on the acquisition of treasury shares. Between January 1st, 2021, and January 31st, 2021, a total of 2,110,378 shares in the company, corresponding to around 0.81% of the current share capital, were repurchased with an equivalent value of EUR 199,999,912.40. The average price of the own shares repurchased during this period was EUR 94.77 per share.
Information on the repurchase of own shares during the 2021 financial year can also be found in the company's 2021 annual report. The share buyback was carried out on the basis of the authorization granted by the company's annual general meeting on June 23rd, 2020, and serves to fulfill obligations of Zalando SE from stock option programs for employees of the Zalando group and for members of the executive board of Zalando SE. Since the reporting date until today's AGM, apart from that, another 2,200,000 further treasury shares have been repurchased. I'd now like to hand the floor back to Mariella Röhm-Kottmann.
Thank you very much. On behalf of the supervisory board, I would like to thank the management board for the good cooperation and the good work and trusted cooperation in the 2021 financial year. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued health, safety, and well-being of Zalando employees has been a top priority for the executive board. At the same time, we'd like to thank all employees who have contributed to this successful year, regardless of their function.