Thank you very much and also very cordial welcome to this year's Annual General Meeting. We are meeting under unusual circumstances today And we know that many of you have questions on how Zalando went through this COVID time, and that's why we decided to begin the presentation with this topic before moving on to the actual report on the year 2019. Now what was our answer to corona? Quickly adapting to new situations, I believe, is part of the core DNA of the company. You might know that we were founded in the middle of the financial crisis 2,008 and this is a time that still shapes the company today because we have learned that we have to face situations like that with respect, but at the same time without fear.
And we also learned that every challenge, every crisis also offers opportunities when you are willing to react quickly. And we again tried to do this time when the crisis became evident in Europe. We very quickly changed the management of the company and focused on 3 topics that I'd like to highlight. Priority 1 was the health and safety of our employees that needed to be protected. We very quickly sent everybody who was able to work from home into the home office and we very much focused on providing a safe working environment for those who cannot work from home.
And we went beyond the requirements of the health offices, particularly in the logistics locations and also in our studios. And in parallel to this, we try to ensure that we could keep the business running during this difficult time to continue to deliver and provide the accustomed service to our customers. 2nd priority was to ensure the financial success of the company. During the 1st weeks of the lockdown, we had revenue returns or revenue decreases of almost 25%, which was a new situation to us. So we decided to make use of all credit lines to bring as much liquidity as possible into the company.
And we also started the biggest savings program of the company with a volume of €300,000,000 The 3rd priority has from the beginning on been to find strategic answer to the situation. We asked ourselves how can we be part of the solution, because we knew that we were affected by the crisis, but we also understood that our industry and many of the brands and partners we are cooperating with are even more affected by the situation. So we decided that merchandise that has already been delivered to us would be paid before the agreed upon date. So our partners would be able to have an increased liquidity. And we also knew that brick and mortar retail was especially affected by the situation.
So we focused on opening our platform even more for our brick and mortar partners through the connected retail program. So we enabled them to keep part of their business open during this difficult time. So we learned that the strategy that we've been following for many years now can help the industry, can help our ecosystem to persevere in this time of crisis. Now the corona situation isn't over yet, but we can already say that despite the great personal challenges and sometimes also because of the big personal hits that the pandemic also brought about still led to a situation where we managed to find a good course through the crisis and we learned and saw that teamwork is one of the core values that our company is built upon. And we would like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much to all of the employees for everything that has been done in the past months.
And we would like to explicitly highlight the logistics locations because without the work that is done there and has been done there, we would be in a considerably worse situation.
Of course, today, we would like to report about the past year. The very fact that we were able to navigate so successfully through this crisis is also due to the decisions taken in last year 2019 in the run up. 2019 was a decisive year for us in many ways. We made important decisions that our further growth is based upon and these decisions help us stay focused and act with a clear focus going forward. In the beginning of 2019, we revised our platform strategy, and we brought together our teams with one vision.
We said we wanted to become the starting point for fashion. Our customers want to be offered a unified offering on their smartphones for one particular service and this is a trend that goes on. Just think of music and Spotify. We just want to be this one app for the world of fashion. And our figures show us that we're on the right way.
We informed you about the details of this platform strategy at the last AGM already. 2019 was a successful and profitable year for Veranda. We were able to clearly increase our GMV, which is in line with our long term goals by 24%. The increase in revenues was 20%. Especially with the important OKRs, we see a very positive development.
31,000,000 active customers ordered with Landau in 2019, currently 32,000,000 customers, which is due to the growth in new customers that we saw happening in the last weeks during the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Our shop was visited 4,200,000,000 times in 17 countries, representing a plus of 33% visavisheprevious year. And the smartphone has long stopped being just a device to find inspiration. The majority of our customers directly buys from the Zalando app. Our GMV in 2019 grew by 56% via the app, a clear sign of a starting point of fashion strategy working.
At this point, a comment on the appropriation of the balance sheet total for 2019. The balance sheet total is €199,626.6 €0.68 As you know from our agenda, we are proposing to carry forward the full balance sheet total to new amount. This proposal is in line with our strategy to further invest in growth and we also invest in technology to offer the best possible customer experience. Customers come to the Landau more and more often and they more often use the app to do that. So this can be the same in the future.
We invest in 3 core areas in technology, logistics and in our product assortment. Technology enables us to offer the best possible customer experience on the fashion store. And we invest a lot into this area, especially in features like Get the Look and also in creating personalized customer experiences. Of course, we keep on investing into our logistics. So we can quickly and reliably supply our customers in 17 markets.
Our international logistics network also in the last weeks has made an important contribution to us navigating this crisis in the best possible way. There's a further cornerstone, which is a relevant product assortment for customers. Here, we keep on investing as well. In the course of this year, we will further increase our initiatives in the pre owned area. Through the Zalando Wardrobe app, we've already collected and gathered some experience and we've seen customers coming to us in their true hype when apparently everyone spent more time at home and took a closer look at their wardrobe.
In the next months, we will establish a category for pre owned clothing on the Zalando fashion
store? We really want to be the starting point for fashion. And this means every fashion item relevant to our customers should be available through Zalando. We already have 500,000 articles on our platform from 2,500 fashion brands. And last year, we've also further expanded our range of products.
We have fashion brands such as Victoria Beckham, Utterke, which is the 6th Inditex brand on Zalando and Caledonia as new brands on the platform. We were also able to continue our growth in the beauty sector with brands such as GlamGlow and Aveda. And what I'm particularly glad about is that with is that we were able to expand the range in our sustainable fashion sector with brands such as EcoAlph, Mud Jeans and Under Protection. I'm glad that we're growing together with our partners. The average Zalando customer buys around 13 brands a year across all different price categories.
So we're not just becoming the starting point for fashion for customers, but also for our partners because we've become more and more of a digital strategy for brands for our partners. And we continue to invest in strategically relevant segments. We want to expand our premium business by 2023. We want to triple our GMV in the premium and luxury segment and double the assortment. We've already added brands such as Versace Jeans Couture, Vivienne Westwood and Victoria Victoria Beckham that we have on the platform.
So what we want to do is really create the right environment on our Zalando platform for all brands to really reach their customers in a more direct way. And this is one thing that has clearly shown during the corona crisis that it's important to reach customers in a digital way irrespective of the physical location. Zalando already is the largest fashion shopping street Europe with 32,000,000 customers across 17 different markets. And in many ways, with corona, we have accelerated such thoughts. Now the path to this starting point for fashion is our platform.
At the beginning of 2019, we defined clear targets for 2023, 2024. We want to achieve a GMV of €20,000,000,000 and we want to strongly expand our platform business. This means that our partner program is the core of our strategy. With the partner program, we enable our partners to present their brands to customers on the Zalando platform and to sell goods directly to customers By 2023, 2024 partners, fashion brands and retailers should account for 40% of our GMV. We are already seeing a strong development here.
At the end of the year, the share of the partner program made up 15%, which is 5 percentage points higher than a year earlier. And just in the past few weeks, we have once again significantly increased the share. So we continue to invest in services that make it even easier for our partners to reach customers directly through Zalando. One of them is Zalando Fulfillment Solutions. 40% of all partner program orders are now already shipped with ZFS.
We take care of the logistics for our partners, which in turn means that our customers receive the usual service and fewer parcels since articles from several partners are shipped together. And another important lever here is the expansion of CMSR marketing services.
Let us give you two examples of how we've been able to help many brands and partners in recent weeks. Example number 1, brick and mortar retailers. Here, we've reacted quickly and, for example, have canceled the commission for sales via the Landau for new and existing partners completely. Many partners told us that this way they could at least maintain parts of their sales, pay the fixed costs such as rent or even bring back employees from short time work. Today, this service connected retail is available for shops in Germany in the Netherlands and in the next weeks is going to be available also in Spain, in Sweden and in Poland.
Next example, number 2, the partner program as a whole has also grown strongly. We have initiated immediate aid, especially for small and medium sized brands. And with success, we've done so. In April, we added 50 new partners within 3 weeks, and the number of articles sold in the partner program doubled in April compared to February and rose to over 8,000,000. The structural change in the fashion industry towards online is currently running in fast motion.
We are convinced that together we can achieve more and the last weeks have clearly confirmed this. We are a reliable partner with whom brands can implement their digital business, and we continue to see great potential for the brands, for Zalando and for our customers.
And that's why our strategic focus for 2019 and for the future is on growth. The corona crisis has accelerated many trends that already existed. Many of us in the past weeks have gone through numerous video conferences and this has become part of our working world that we have to live within the same can be seen in the eco world. A growth trend can be confirmed here. So we're continuing what we said last year and the years before.
We want to have a market share of 5% in the European fashion market until 2023, 2024. We want to have a gross ordering volume of €20,000,000 I. E. Doubling the numbers we have today. Until then, the platform model will make up about 50% of our business.
So we continue to focus on growing our company and strategically developing our business model. When we really want to safeguard our success in the long run, it means that we as a company have to become more sustainable because we're convinced that only companies that provide sustainable solutions will remain inspiring and relevant for their customers. For that reason, in October 2019, we published our sustainable strategy, Do More. It contains an ambitious vision, namely to become a sustainable fashion platform with a net positive impact for people and the planet. This means that we have to do more than just change.
It means that we have to really transform our company in the years to come. In this strategy, we mentioned 6 clear areas with clear goals: climate, packaging, sustainable fashion, social standards in the supply chain, further training of our employees and circular economy. For all of these six topics until 2023, we want to define concrete goals and be measured against those goals. I can already tell you that we have made strong progress in the past months on this since October 2019. We as a company have become carbon neutral by offsetting all emissions of our business and this includes all of the deliveries and returns.
At the same time, we also work on reducing our CO2 footprint per order. For example, for 2019, we were able to reduce the CO2 footprint per order by almost 30% compared to the financial year 2017. When you order a package from Zalanda today, 90% of the packaging material is already recycled material and we order we offer 35,000 more sustainable fashion items for our customers. So it's already the largest range of sustainable fashion in Europe. A couple of weeks ago, we also set ourselves science based targets, I.
E. Targets to further reduce our CO2 footprint in accordance with the Paris Climate Convention, we want to make our contribution to limit global warming to a maximum of 1 point 5 degrees centigrade. In order to do this by 2025, we will reduce our emissions from our operations by 80%. And at the same time, we also want to invite all of our partners to set their own goals. In concrete terms, we want to convince 90% of our key partners to ensure that they also set themselves ambitious climate goals.
Another important issue for long term success are to implement more diversity in our company. We believe that diverse teams make better and more interesting decisions and have better discussions. And we can already see in many places that Zalando is a very diverse company in many respects. But this is not yet sufficiently reflected in our management teams and here we really need to act. So last year we defined new goals.
We said that by the end of 2023, we want to achieve a balanced ratio of men and women in the top six management levels. And this also includes the supervisory board and management board. And we can be very pleased that we've already made some progress here in the Supervisory Board. This is a goal that we can already achieve with today's election. But diversity is not just limited to gender.
The current discussions in society show that there are many topics, many areas where we have to make progress in the years to come. Now let's look at the forecast for the financial year 2020. It's already clear that this year will be a decisive year for our company. The impact of the corona crisis has already been mentioned and we believe that the virus will continue to be a challenge for us in the 2nd semester. But we believe that we are very well prepared, particularly because we believe that we've invested in the right topics in the past 12 years and we have a huge customer range with 32,000,000 active customers.
We have strong partnerships with more than 2,500 brand relationships. We have a European logistics networks with 11 sites in 5 countries and we have a solid financial base with more than $1,000,000,000 cash balance. And in addition to this, we have the strategy that continued to become even more important during the corona crisis and we want to accelerate its implementation. We've seen this over the course of the Q2, namely unexpected positive effects. This all gives us reason for optimism that we can continue to win market shares this year and in the years to come.
And thank you very much.
We would like to use this moment to say thank you to the Supervisory Board members who are leaving us. Beate, Konrad and Anthony, leaving the Supervisory Board after many years of committed and dedicated cooperation. We would like to say thank you for that. You've been very dedicated and with a lot of passion you shaped our discussions at board level. We would like to very much thank you for these many years of good cooperation.
And dear Alex, the day after tomorrow, 12 years ago, on 25th May, 2008, we sat together with the Notary and established the company which preceded the Lando limited company with €50,000 of initial capital. We thank you very much for assisting us in this long journey we've been putting. Nobody has had such a holistic view on the Landau's evolution from the start as you have. From the 1st months at our first offices and the time navigating our way through the eight-two thousand and nine and this crazy growth time between 2010 to 2012 where we grew from 50 to 5000 staff and from 6,000,000 to 1,200,000,000 sales within a matter of a couple of months through to 2015 and then the switch to the platform strategy and the tech business, nobody like you has been with us and has assisted us all the time like you have. Thank you.
Dear Alex, let me tell you that we learned a lot from you in the last years. You've always been an inspiration for us especially when it comes to taking courage and being entrepreneurial. We talked about in Las Vegas. There are so many things we could tell everyone anecdotes. We would just like to tell you one in 2010.
The situation was as follows. Our Chief Purchasing Officer had ordered much more merchandise than we were able to cover in our ambitious budget. This was quite a risk for the company. So when we reported one of our investors on that, your answer to that, your response was well, but there is one person here who does think along an entrepreneurial line. So it wasn't just courage and entrepreneurship that brought us forward, but also the fact that in many situations you always covered our backs and helped us.
So we were able to focus completely on letting our company grow. We had you as an early investor and as a Supervisory Board member, nobody would have suited this position better than you have. Thank you very much for that. Dear Alex, there's one thing I need to add. We like your modesty.
You were down on the ground with your 2 feet and you always were able to combine these qualities with your entrepreneurial thinking. This has really inspired the 3 of us and it has inspired the whole company because we've always tried to steer the company in that very direction. We will of course be friends in future as well, but unfortunately your official mandate on the Zalando's Advisory Board now ends after more than 6 years. We have a little gift for you, which we would like to hand over. Maybe you remember the Friends books everyone used to have in primary school.
We contacted some early Friends of yours and they told us some anecdotes about the years to spend with you and they have made their notes in this friend's book and I hope that you will like this little present we prepared for you. So thank you very much, Alex, on behalf of the whole company and on behalf of the 3 of us, at this point, in the name of the supervisory board and the