Quarantine after being exposed, the other co-CEO, David, can step in easily. Therefore, we'll kick off our full year publication with our Co-CEOs, David Schneider and Robert Gentz. They will give you an update of our growth ambitions and our plan for the next year. After that, we have a dedicated performance deep dive on our recent results, presented by our COO, David Schröder. For the Q&A session, we'll be back here live together with both Davids on stage and Robert virtually as well. A couple of housekeeping rules before we actually kick this off. To ensure the health and safety of our team, the presentation has been pre-recorded. All the participants on-site have tested negative to the coronavirus. We also observe the necessary hygiene rules. If you want to ask a question, please click the button, Ask a Question, on the right side of your screen.
When you click on it, you can easily type in your question. The question section is open in the next few seconds. With this, David, the floor is yours.
Welcome, and thank you for watching. Today, it is David and myself who will lead you through the 2021 results. I can speak for all of us, that 2021 was an outstanding year. We have a lot of exciting initiatives coming up, and we will talk about what to expect in 2022. Yes, 2021 was a truly remarkable year and an important step on our journey to be the starting point for fashion. We expanded our footprint to 23 markets. Last year alone, we launched six new markets in Eastern Europe. In 2021, we reached more than 48 million active customers. That is 25% increase from 2020.
That also means we expanded our customer base with 10 million new customers, which is great, but an even more important part of our strategy is to deepen customer relationship and create loyalty. That is also something we really see paying off. To give you an example, 60% of our overall GMV now comes from active customers who have spent more than EUR 500 a year with us. Our customers now buy on average 5x a year. This strong traction in customer loyalty has translated into strong financial performance. We delivered stellar growth momentum and an acceleration compared to 2020. Our group GMV grew to EUR 14.3 billion. That's, yeah, quite an outstanding 34% growth year-on-year. Maybe let's also put this in absolute numbers.
We added EUR 3.7 billion in GMV in 1 year. As we have also strong momentum on our partner program, revenues didn't grow as much as the GMV, but I'm also proud that we exceeded EUR 10 billion in net revenues, which I think is quite an amazing milestones in the 13th year after founding Zalando. Thanks to that strong momentum, we were able to deliver a healthy level of profitability with more than EUR 468 million in adjusted EBIT, which is a margin of 4.5% of revenues. Yeah, that was a great result, and there was a lot of hard work behind these results. I also wanna take the opportunity to deeply thank all our employees for the great collaboration, for the focus, and, yeah, for all the commitment everybody put in.
For us, being the starting point for fashion means we want Zalando to be the destination where everyone gravitates to for all their fashion needs and wants. You don't need to go anywhere else for fashion because we have it all in fashion, lifestyle, and beauty, or we can find it for you, be it in our warehouse network, in our partners' e-com warehouses or even in stores. Through us, you can get it in the most convenient way, and there's no way to get it faster, easier or better. On top, the digital experience is great. It's tailored and personalized to you. If you're looking for something, we offer the easiest place to find it. If you wanna be inspired and entertained, Zalando is the best place for that too.
We're not there yet in all these dimensions, but I think our progress is amazing, and every day, our team is working hard to live up to these promises for our customers. To achieve our starting point ambition, we are focused on three strategic pillars and have set ourselves ambitious goals for 2025. First, we aim to create deep customer relationships at scale to play an important part in our customers' lives. Second, we transition towards a true platform business. Let's rather say a true fashion platform, bringing together customers and partners in a way that really creates unique experiences and strong benefits for all. Third, we use our scale to become more sustainable and drive positive impact for people and the planet.
This is not only the right thing to do, but also strongly in line with long-term interests of our customers and partners. The strong progress on all these dimensions last year puts us in a very good position to reach our 2025 goals, which are over EUR 30 billion GMV. Our partner business share of more than 50%. To grow in a more sustainable way, we are working towards our net positive target. Let me maybe begin with our first strategic dimensions to create deep customer relationships at scale. In our journey, we learned that just selling different categories to our customers is not ideal. Customers' needs and wants are so different that ultimately we cannot just add new categories of merchandise. Instead, we build distinct customer propositions.
If you're interested in the latest beauty trends or if you prepare for an outdoor adventure, you wanna have an experience that really caters to your needs in that moment. To us, a proposition means a tailored experience and a commitment. Only when you commit to deeply understanding the needs and wants of customers, be it in fashion or in beauty or in sports or in pre-owned, then you can drive innovation in the experience and earn deep customer relationships. Our core proposition is fashion. That's where we started, and that's the biggest propositions we are known for and loved for by our customers. About 90% of our active customers buy fashion with us. If we look at the past few years, there's been a huge development. We have an ever-growing selection and access to the most relevant brands and stories.
We drive innovation in understanding customer styles and sizes to really make the right recommendations. We add inspiration and entertainment, which I think becomes more relevant in future and one of the highest priorities we have to work on. Because really, no single platform has figured out how to combine a transactional e-com experience with a content-driven inspirational experience. There's either the content experiences, yeah, that are not great in enabling the customer to buy something, or there is an e-com experience where customers are not really inspired or entertained. That's probably the biggest frontier in fashion commerce. We're very committed to make bigger steps in this journey throughout the year. Let's take a look. Let's also have a look at our other propositions.
Last year we talked a lot about beauty and how we wanna win in the beauty space, that it requires proposition and in-depth innovation of the experience. Yeah, we have made great progress here. Beauty grew over 100% year-over-year. We increased our selection to over 25,000 products from 400 brands. Added great beauty houses like Estée Lauder, L'Oréal or Coty, and of course also through our partnership with Sephora. We're on a strong path with beauty and are happy with how customer base has adopted our beauty proposition. For us, it's not only about beauty itself. We have developed a repeatable playbook. A playbook of how we can broaden our customer proposition offerings, then dive deep in the innovation of the experience and help our customers to cross-connect across all these propositions.
This playbook we can use to build our further propositions and open more doors for our customers to connect. Talk about connecting these propositions is a critical path of our strategy to achieve deeper relationships where we want to dive deep in the innovation of each propositions. Ultimately, we wanna make sure that one plus one is more than two. There's a lot of value for our customers to engage in all our propositions in order to get the most out of Zalando. Zalando Plus, our membership program, is our ultimate tool as a meta proposition that unlocks value. Plus for an annual fee, you get the best out of Zalando. Even faster shipments and early access to exclusive product lines. We just passed the mark of more than 1 million members. That's an amazing milestone, 3 years after we launched Plus.
There's now more to come with Plus. While the first million members took us 3 years, the second million we forecast to achieve in this year. In 2022, we'll double down in making Zalando Plus the loyalty program in fashion. After expanding the program to the Netherlands, France, and Italy in 2021, we will double the number of new markets by the end of 2023. We'll add more benefits and improve existing ones in the area of convenience and assortment. For example, we will give Zalando Plus members early access to sales events. Plus is the ultimate sign of deep relationships for our customers. A Plus member visits Zalando twice as often and spends three times more than a non-Plus customer.
We just talked a lot about how we aim to create these great experiences, be it for fashion or for beauty or for designer. Customers want more choice. They seek inspiration, and they wanna be entertained. Our partner brands deliver a great deal of this. They add to a limitless choice to strong brand stories and even, you know, all the hot drops people used to line up for in the streets. Building our customer experiences also means building a destination where brands want to be. Only if our partners see a big value add of Zalando, for their own strategy, they will invest with all these assets. There are two main components that create strong value for partners. Number one is a multi-brand environment for millions of customers. Number two, capabilities for e-commerce at scale.
We'll explain how we invest into these areas in a way that no individual brand could, and how this actually creates strong win-win-win situations for customers, partners, and Zalando. Let's start with the multi-brand environment. Why do we mention multi-brand so often? Because that is how customers shop fashion. Zalando customers shop on average 18 different brands throughout their order history. Even within one order, 50% shop more than one brand. As a fashion inspiration starts in the vast majority of all customers' journeys without a concrete product or brand in mind. Being the starting point means that customers come to us before they decide what they buy. This concept is very important for our partners because they know they can only cover, like, a smaller fraction of the inspiration part themselves, and they need to be where the customers really engage.
We will build a place where they can engage with the relevant audience. I think our growing brand portfolio is a good indicator of how relevant we are for brands. Launching brands like Sephora or Apple Watch show how we create stories that elevate brand equity and customer engagement. We have scaled our assortment width, driving really, like, a flawless choice across 5,800 brands, meaning we were able to increase the assortment of our most relevant brands by over 75%. It's not only about a wide assortment, it's also about showcasing the brand's DNA and presenting the best range of products. That's why we have introduced dedicated brand homes. These allow our customers to follow the brands they love. In turn, brands can engage with customers in a meaningful way and build deeper relationships and deep learnings for themselves.
Already 14 million Zalando customers have become brand fans over the past years. Last but not least, our shared values across topics like inclusivity or, you know, talking about genderless or sustainability, unlock impactful collaborations, as all of these topics are very much top of mind for our customers. Together with our partners, we aim to drive further engagement across these trends. Investments and innovation in these areas in a multi-brand environment creates a strong value add for brands as it helps them to connect to their target audience, and it helps them in their own strategy. The more brands invest into the Zalando experience, the better our customer propositions get. The second big value add for our partners are capabilities that enable digital business. We solve three major challenges for them.
First, they have to be online where the customer is, and we enable them to go direct to consumer in a multi-brand environment. Our partner program and Connected Retail are our way to put them out there. You also see that the strong brands place more and more bets on direct to consumer. I think it's a very strong signal that they consider not only, like, their own website as direct to consumer, but also selling through our platform. By now, 30% of our GMV comes from this model. As a second step, partners can leverage our infrastructure to reach customers in all of our markets. Zalando Fulfillment Solutions is a great lever for brands to boost their reach without having to invest in their own infrastructure.
We strive for 75% of partner program items shipped by ZFS by 2025. Today, we are already at 55%. We're on a very good track. Then thirdly, we enable partners to speak to their audience and leverage our data and reach to drive their sales. Not only sales, but also to position their brand. Our long-term target is that 3%-4% of our GMV comes from the Zalando Marketing Services. We reached 2% in the fourth quarter of 2021, which I think is already like a good proof point that more and more partners are adopting our marketing services. Let's dive one level deeper into our logistics capabilities, as these are clearly needed for any direct to consumer approach. We have built a highly relevant network.
Our partner program business is a strong indicator of how brands engage with the direct to consumer possibilities. Our partner business grew at an impressive rate of over 75%. That's more than three times faster than our retail business. Zalando fulfillment solution at the same time grew even stronger. The item volume sold by partners, but shipped by Zalando more than doubled year-over-year. One of the reasons for partners to utilize ZFS is the immediate international footprint. We offer all of Europe in a box to partners, which most cannot cover with their own footprint or with like a logistics provider. This is reflected in the strong growth rate of our partner program in markets other than Germany. For example, in Switzerland, we went up 10 percentage points share to partner business share of 25%.
In Belgium, we reached 33%. In Spain, we more than doubled its share to 19%. I think Spain is also a good example of how Connected Retail adds a lot of value to local customers. Connected Retail means connecting inventory of local brick-and-mortar stores and shipping directly from the stores to customers. We have now more than 7,000 stores connected in our network. If we're successful enabling partner business success on Zalando and on the Zalando platform, we can also enable our partners to leverage our logistics backbone to drive the success of their direct to consumer business across all channels. We will start by opening up Zalando Fulfillment Solutions with channels beyond Zalando. We enable multi-channel fulfillment for our partners.
By doing this, we will offer brands and retailers the opportunity to outsource e-commerce logistics to Zalando. Some of our partners have actively asked for us to fulfill beyond our platform because they face challenges in their own approach. For example, if they serve Zalando customers and then at the same time their own e-com in several other channels, that usually leads to splitting up inventories, and that again leads to bad order economics. I can tell you partners don't like fragmented inventory. Another reason, shipping cross-border and integrating like the right providers is quite complex. Usually, you know, many brands and providers cannot ship to like all the markets we're talking about. At the same time, customers' expectations around convenience are getting higher and higher. Investment towards becoming more sustainable.
You know, your own operations are needed and in demand by customers. We have built large and flexible networks that really tackles all of these challenges. We can offer partners flexible expansion to reach all markets and tap into our constantly improving convenience offer. By consolidating orders, we improve order economics, and we also reduce the carbon footprint, which is a nice segue to the third element of our strategy. We aim to build a sustainable platform to win the hearts and minds of our customers. Our ambition is to be a net positive company in the long run. That means that we give back more to society and the environment than we take. That's a high ambition. To achieve it, we have to work on solutions together with our partners and invest in innovative technologies.
Only then we can really unlock opportunities that will help both Zalando and the industry to evolve. We believe that with our platform, we are in the right position to do so, because we can engage with more than 5,800 brands, and on the other hand, 48 million customers. We drive our efforts forward in three areas: our planet, products, and people. We're very confident in our efforts and believe we're on the right path. Nevertheless, there are significant challenges to solve and solutions to scale. Let's dive into two examples. My first example is our more sustainable assortment. Our commitment is to generate 25% of our GMV with more sustainable products by 2023. I think we've made quite some good progress so far.
We're proud to offer our customers what we believe is the biggest sustainable assortment in Europe with now more than 140,000 products. That compares to around 80,000 last year. Also to put it a bit in perspective, our sustainability assortment is now as large as our entire assortment in our IPO year. The sale of these products accounted for 21.6% of our gross merchandise volume overall, which is already getting close to our 25% target. Also from customers, we had very good feedback. We see strong interest in these products. For example, if we look at conversion rates or on more sustainable products versus similar standard products. In order for this progress to be meaningful, we need to overcome three key challenges.
The first is the lack of a common definition for sustainability for fashion products. The second challenge is tracing all this information across the value chain, starting from the field to the product. The third challenge is around the customer's understanding of these standards. We know from our research that they find sustainability to be quite complex. It's complex to understand, and it's also complex to act on it. That's why we have a team fully dedicated on building a better digital experience that allows customers to engage with sustainability in a better way. My second example is more sustainable packaging. When it comes to packaging, of course, our first priority is to ensure that products reach our customers safely and undamaged. At the same time, we aim to reduce our packaging volumes to a minimum and specifically eliminate single-use plastic.
To do this, we focus on two key elements in our packaging design. Number one, 89% of our packaging materials contains recycled input, and then 99% is recyclable so that our customers can dispose of the packaging responsibly. Our main achievement last year was to switch to paper shipping packs across the Zalando, which we'll actually complete in the next few months. One long-term challenge in the industry remains polybags. This is a massive challenge, and the industry is basically every single product is wrapped in a polybag. What we'll do is, together with our partners, we're testing new materials and reusable options to tackle this. We also have to be honest that there is a long way to go. This will be one of our key focus areas going forward.
That was just a snapshot of all our efforts we're driving. I have to say that it's very motivating to see how passionate all teams are working on ideas and, you know, how deeply ingrained sustainability already is in all of our projects. We have talked a lot about growth, but it's important for us to not grow just for the sake of growing. We wanna leverage all of our customer reach, our capabilities, and our relationships in the industry to enable and then drive some structural changes. With that, I would like to hand over to David who can give you an overview of how the sustainable growth looks like in numbers.
Over the past 24 months, we've experienced an exceptional operational and financial performance acceleration. As a result of this acceleration, which was particularly pronounced in the first half of 2021, with GMV growth reaching 46% year-over-year, we are well on track to reach our midterm growth ambition. As European consumers and economies are gradually returning back to a new normal, we've seen our growth rates starting to normalize since summer 2021. That said, we are confidently looking ahead towards our 2025 GMV target of more than EUR 30 billion as we continue to grow from a significantly higher base. The opportunity ahead of us remains immense. We are operating in a large market that is projected to grow to EUR 450 billion over the next few years.
Although we have achieved a lot over the past decade, Zalando's market share is still only at around 3%. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated change in the fashion industry that has long been in progress and has blurred the boundaries between offline and online as consumers and brands are increasingly going digital. Our strong platform strategy perfectly positions us to take advantage of this opportunity, making us confident that we can serve more than 10% of the total fashion market in the long term. To capture this opportunity, our number one priority remains to deliver continued strong growth. Hence, we continue to invest through the cycle to create long-term value for customers, partners, and shareholders. For 2022, we do expect a more volatile market environment driven by three key factors, weakening consumer sentiment, continued supply chain disruptions, and rising inflation concerns.
While we will not be able to fully isolate ourselves from these temporary market developments, we are confident that just like in the past, our strong platform business model, our agile business steering approach, and our continued efficiency improvements will allow us to successfully navigate through this volatile market environment and to continue to grow faster than the European online fashion segment. Looking ahead at 2022, we do expect to grow GMV by 16%-23% and to add EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion additional GMV.
On a two-year CAGR for the years 2021 and 2022, our GMV outlook implies a growth range of 25%-28%, ahead of our midterm target growth corridor of 20%-25%. In line with our platform transition and increasing share of the partner program, we expect revenue growth to trail GMV growth, resulting in revenue growth of 12%-19%. Similar to last year, this growth will not be evenly distributed across quarters. Due to baseline effects, we expect lower than usual year-over-year growth for the first half and a re-acceleration in the second half. Looking at profitability, we expect an adjusted EBIT of EUR 430 million-EUR 510 million, implying a margin of 3.7%-4.1%, which is well in line with our midterm guidance.
To fund our continued investments into our logistics infrastructure and our technology platform, and thereby enable our 2025 growth ambition, we plan capital expenditure of EUR 400 million-EUR 500 million. Now back to you, David, for some final remarks.
Yeah, we have a very strong team in place to advance our strategic agenda, to scale the business and, of course, to continue to deliver results. Robert and I are very happy that Sandra has joined our management board today as CFO. David will assume a newly created role as Chief Operating Officer, focusing on building and scaling unique capabilities and enabling the company's growth. Jim transitioned last year from CTO into a newly created Chief Business and Product Officer role. They are developing, marketing, and growing our consumer offerings. Astrid Arndt joined us last April as Chief People Officer. We are all excited about the strong progress we have made in 2021, and further strengthening our position as the starting point for fashion.
In 2021, the company grew significantly faster than expected, putting us on track to achieve our midterm growth ambition and reach more than EUR 30 billion GMV by 2025. Zalando continues to focus on strategic initiatives that will drive future growth. We're laser-focused on execution and in a strong position to continue to deliver long-term growth. Yeah, thanks to the whole team for this outstanding achievement. Yeah, now let's hear what David has to say and jump to our performance deep dive.
Welcome to our performance deep dive session. Today's keynote highlights the strong progress we are making towards our vision to be the starting point for fashion, providing further insights into our key strategic priorities and initiatives for 2022, and reiterating our 2025 ambition. Building on that, I will now provide you with more details regarding the development of key strategic, operational, and financial performance indicators for Q4 and full year 2021, as well as additional information regarding our outlook for 2022. Starting with our strategic priorities to grow our active customer base and to further deepen our customer relationships, we see great progress when looking at key metrics. During 2021, we were able to grow our active customer base to 48.5 million customers, supported by strong new customer acquisition throughout the year.
We also saw a continued decrease in new customer churn, with churn reaching an all-time low over the course of 2021. Customer order frequency reached a new all-time high of 5.2 orders per active customer over the past twelve months. Average basket size showed a slight year-over-year decrease of 1.3%, mainly driven by a lower average item value compared to the prior year. As a result of increasing order frequency and broadly stable basket size, GMV per active customer grew by more than 7.1% over the last 12 months to now almost EUR 300, representing the strongest year-over-year increase since 2017. While we are very happy with the progress achieved in 2021, we expect our customer metrics to normalize over the coming quarters as the return to normal continues.
When looking at customer development over a longer time horizon, we see consistently positive trends in the evolution of our customer cohorts. These trends are well reflected in this cohort chart, which we update and share with you on an annual basis. It shows the total GMV per cohort and order year. The light gray bar at the bottom shows the GMV from cohorts we had acquired before 2016. Staggered on top of that, you see the GMV contribution of cohorts we acquired in the years thereafter. During 2021, we saw more than 10 million new customers join our platform to shop fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products. The 2021 cohort delivered almost 25% more GMV in the first year than the cohort acquired in 2020. It is not only the newly acquired customers that contribute to Zalando's growth.
When we look at the development of older cohorts, we see consistent growth and an increase of annual GMV contribution for each cohort from the second year onwards, following some initial churn in the first year. It might be interesting to note that in 2021, Zalando's GMV would have grown at a double-digit rate even if we had not acquired a single new customer. Let me now provide a bit more context regarding the exceptionally large customer cohorts acquired during 2020 and 2021. This period has been strongly influenced by the evolution of the global pandemic and resulting governmental restrictions and changes in customer behavior, causing an acceleration in the structural consumer demand shift from offline to online. As a consequence, more consumers than ever before have shifted to Zalando for their fashion and lifestyle needs.
Our new customer growth accelerated significantly from 2019 to 2020, and remained at an elevated level in 2021. When looking at the quality of these customer cohorts in more detail, we see that they show very similar or even slightly better characteristics compared to previously acquired cohorts, as indicated by their engagement, their reorder behavior, and their spend with us. This observation also holds true beyond the peak periods of the pandemic, as proven by the continued strong developments in the second half of 2021, when European consumers and economies saw a gradual return to normal. Let's now turn to our second strategic priority, enabling our partners direct-to-consumer business, which is at the core of our platform transition. In 2021, we recorded exceptional growth across our entire portfolio of partner-facing platform services.
Our partner business, consisting of the partner program at Connected Retail, which aims to connect our partners directly with European consumers, has grown by more than 75% in 2021, resulting in a partner GMV share of 30% in Q4. Zalando Fulfillment Solutions, which allow our partners to leverage our European logistics network to increase their customer reach and satisfaction, while at the same time reducing complexity and cost, have grown even faster than our core offering over the course of the last year. The number of items shipped via ZFS increased by more than 100% year-over-year, representing a 55% share of all partner program items shipped in Q4.
Last but not least, Zalando Marketing Services, which enable our partners to increase their visibility of the offering and to build their brand on Zalando, also recorded very strong growth of more than 90% in 2021. ZMS revenues reached 2% of Fashion Store GMV in Q4, putting us well on track to achieve our long-term ambition of 3%-4% of GMV. Our third strategic dimension is focused on people and planet, and on delivering the ambitious goals we set out in our do.MORE sustainability, as well as our do.BETTER diversity and inclusion strategies. As part of our Zalando principle to default to transparency, we report annually on the progress made in both areas.
While you will find a great level of detail in the relevant sustainability and D&I progress reports available on our website, I would hereby like to highlight that we make continuous and strong progress towards reaching our sustainability goals, which is also being recognized externally. As part of our do.MORE strategy, and next to drastically reducing our own emissions, we aim for our partners accounting for 90% of supplier-related emissions to set science-based emission reduction targets by 2025. By the end of 2021, we are pleased to say that partners accounting for around 51% of supplier-related emissions had already done so, compared to 34% in 2020. The second example shown here concerns our sustainable packaging targets.
With our switch from plastic to paper shipping bags, we reduced the use of plastic shipping bags to 37% at the end of 2021 and aim for 0% by 2023. Thirdly, we expanded our portfolio of more sustainable products to more than 140,000 products, compared with around 80,000 a year earlier. The sale of these products accounted for almost 22% of our GMV. These are just three examples, but they clearly demonstrate that we are making quantifiable progress and leveraging our position to drive positive change in the industry. This concludes our wrap-up on the strategic progress we made over the course of the year. Let's now turn to our financials, starting with top-line performance.
We are pleased to report that 2021 saw exceptional top-line performance, with GMV growth of 34.1% and revenue growth of 29.7%, with full year revenues surpassing the EUR 10 billion mark. Both GMV growth and revenue growth are in the upper half of our financial guidance for 2021. For the fourth quarter, GMV growth reached 24.1% year-over-year, with revenue growing 20.5% year-over-year, well in line with our midterm target growth corridor of 20%-25% and representing a two-year CAGR of more than 30%. Looking at both full year 2021 and Q4 developments, partner GMV growth again exceeded overall GMV growth significantly. This also explains, to a large degree, the gap between GMV and revenue growth.
Let's now take a brief look at the developments of each of our three segments. In 2021, Fashion Store GMV grew by 32.6%. Within Fashion Store, the growth rates for the DACH region and the Rest of Europe region were on a similar high level in 2021, driven by a significant growth acceleration in the DACH region by 8 percentage points to 33.3% GMV growth. Whereas Rest of Europe GMV growth remains strong and fairly stable at 31.9%. Our Offprice segment continued on its strong growth trajectory, recording around 50% GMV growth for Q4 as well as full year 2021, which is remarkable, particularly in light of an increasingly challenging supply situation.
The Other Business segment followed the positive trend, driven by a strong performance from Zalando Marketing Services, which benefited from continued high demand of our brand partners for our advertising products, resulting in revenue growth of around 95% for 2021. In the fourth quarter alone, ZMS grew 53% year over year. Besides using ZMS to drive sales on the platform by increasing visibility for certain products, our partners also increased their investments in branding campaigns to build their brand equity on Zalando. Let me conclude the discussion of top-line growth by looking at our multi-year growth performance since the beginning of the pandemic. It is very notable that our two-year GMV CAGR exceeded our midterm GMV growth ambition of 20%-25% CAGR in every single quarter since Q2 2020. Exceeded 30% for three consecutive quarters from Q4 2020 to Q2 2021.
Before starting to normalize again, which we expect to continue in 2022. Let's now turn to profitability. We recorded an adjusted EBIT of EUR 468 million in 2021, representing a 4.5% margin on the back of strong top-line momentum and a continued yet temporary return rate benefit. Q4 profitability came in slightly above pre-pandemic levels, yet remained below last year's level. When looking at the regional profit distribution in our core Fashion Store segment, we can see that our more mature markets in the DACH region delivered strong absolute as well as relative profitability for the full year 2021, also supported by a higher partner business share. The full year adjusted EBIT margin of 8.7% for DACH Fashion Store is in line with 2020.
Rest of Europe profitability came in slightly negative and decreased year-over-year, driven by continued and deliberate over proportional investments into customer acquisition and customer experience to drive growth and market share gains in Rest of Europe. Particularly also in the six new markets in Central and Eastern Europe, which we launched and ramped up over the course of 2021. Offprice saw a more normalized adjusted EBIT margin of 7.2% for the full year compared to 9% in 2020. However, the segment delivered a strong Q4 performance, increasing the adjusted EBIT margin slightly to 13.1%. Our other business turned breakeven for the first time over an entire business year. Let me now give you more detail on our cost line developments that drove profitability in 2021.
For 2021 overall, gross margin decreased by 0.7 percentage points compared to last year's level, mainly as a result of increased discounts to offer our customers competitive prices in a highly promotional market environment, particularly in the second half of the year, as well as continued business mix changes in terms of category mix and country mix. Our fulfillment cost ratio improved for the full year compared to 2020, as a result of a higher level of utilization and efficiency across our European logistics network, and improved order economics benefiting from a lower return rate. The year-over-year deterioration in the fourth quarter fulfillment cost ratio is due to deliberate investments into our convenience proposition to further deepen customer relationships and to drive customer lifetime value.
As, for example, by extending our long-distance shipping offer, expanding and scaling our premium service offering for Zalando Plus, or by our ongoing efforts to offer more sustainable packaging. In 2021, our marketing cost ratio increased year-over-year as we remain focused on customer acquisition and engagement investments, supported by our ROI-based marketing approach and ran major launch campaigns across our six new markets. In the fourth quarter of the year, we reduced our marketing costs in absolute and in relative terms compared to prior year, mainly due to lower brand marketing investments. Last but not least, our admin costs continued the positive trend observed throughout the year, driven by increasing economies of scale and continuous efficiency improvements. As a result, our adjusted EBIT margin decreased by 0.8 percentage points year-over-year to 4.5% in 2021.
Excluding the temporary positive impact from lower return rates, the pro forma 2021 margin would have been 3.4% in 2021 compared to 3.8% in 2020. Since we continue to expect a normalization of return rates over time, and given the significant impact of returns on our operating margins, we believe this pro forma measure provides you with a better view of our underlying profitability development. Turning to cash-related items, we recorded a sizable decrease in our net working capital position year-over-year. The main driver behind this development is a relatively stronger increase in trade payables than in inventories and receivables as a result of the strong growth momentum in our partner business.
Reflecting our continued investment into our technology and infrastructure to enable our growth trajectory, capital expenditure significantly increased year-over-year, both for the full year and the fourth quarter. Mainly due to the strong decrease in net working capital and due to our strong operating cash flow, we recorded a positive free cash flow of EUR 283 million for 2021, broadly in line with the previous year, despite higher capital expenditure. Our cash balance amounted to around EUR 2.3 billion at the end of Q4. Let me close this presentation by providing you with more information regarding our 2022 outlook. Over the past 24 months, we have experienced an exceptional operational and financial performance acceleration. As European consumers and economies are gradually returning back to a new normal, we've seen our growth rates starting to normalize as well.
Looking ahead at 2022, we expect to grow GMV by 16%-23% and to add EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion additional GMV. On a two-year CAGR for the years 2021 and 2022, our GMV outlook implies a growth range of 25%-28%, ahead of our midterm target growth corridor of 20%-25%. In line with our platform transition strategy and increasing share of the partner program, we expect revenue growth to trail GMV growth, resulting in revenue growth of 12%-19%. Similar to last year, this growth will not be evenly distributed across quarters. As we are lapping exceptionally strong performance of 46% GMV growth in the first half of 2021, we expect lower than usual year-over-year growth for Q1 and Q2.
With easing baseline effects in the final six months of the year, we expect our growth to re-accelerate significantly, implying a comparatively stable two-year CAGR for the entire year. Looking at profitability, we expect an adjusted EBIT of EUR 430 million-EUR 510 million, implying a margin of 3.7%-4.1%, which is well in line with our midterm guidance issued last year at our capital markets day to start 2022 in the lower half of our 3%-6% corridor. Compared to 2021, this implies a slight margin decrease as the prior year benefited significantly from temporary lower return rates, which we continue to expect to normalize over time.
For cash-related items, we expect negative net working capital and capital expenditure of EUR 400 million-EUR 500 million to fund our continued investments into our logistics infrastructure and our technology platform, which are among the key enablers of our 2025 growth ambition. Next to the continued execution of our strategy and our through-cycle investments to drive long-term value creation, our 2022 guidance also reflects our exceptionally strong growth in 2021, as well as a more volatile market environment driven by three key factors. First, weakening consumer sentiment linked to the economic outlook and current geopolitical tensions, as well as a wait-and-see approach as the pandemic continues to evolve. Second, continued supply chain disruptions causing supply shortages in certain areas, particularly in sneakers, footwear, and sports.
Third, rising inflation concerns, which might have a further dampening effect on consumer demand in general and discretionary spending in particular. While these same factors have been affecting our performance year to date, uncertainty remains with regards to the duration and magnitude of the impact these temporary market developments will have on our business throughout the rest of the year. To reflect this higher than usual degree of uncertainty, we have chosen to broaden our guidance ranges for 2022. In addition, this slide provides you with more transparency on potential performance scenarios and how the different macroeconomic factors might result in us moving towards the low or the high end of our guidance.
While we will not be able to fully isolate ourselves from these temporary market developments, we are confident that just like in the past, our platform business model will prove to be resilient and will enable us to respond to these short-term challenges. Our strong brand relationships will help us to secure access to stock, while our platform model will allow us to dynamically adjust our offer, our stock levels, and our logistics capacities to various demand scenarios. Furthermore, we will rely on an agile business steering approach as well as continued efficiency improvements to deliver strong performance and to continue to outgrow the European online fashion segment. Let me close this presentation by reiterating that we are truly excited about the immense growth opportunity ahead of us.
We remain laser-focused on our long-term vision to be the starting point for fashion, and on our 2025 ambition to build a sustainable platform business with more than EUR 30 billion in GMV, maximizing long-term value for our customers, our partners, and our shareholders. That concludes our deep dive session. Let's now jump into Q&A.
Good morning and welcome to our Q&A session today. With me are our Co-CEO, David Schneider, and our COO, David Schröder. Virtually, also our Co-CEO, Robert, is there. Before we begin, David would like to deep dive and to share a few words with you.
Yeah. Usually the publication of the annual report and our end of year financials is a special moment for us. However, this year, honestly, it's a bit hard for us to stand here as if it's business as usual, as we watch the war in Ukraine unfold. Our hearts and minds are with the Ukrainian people and of course, all our employees, their families and friends who are directly or indirectly affected. Our priority is to help them as much as we can. We're supporting our impacted employees and then their families with counseling, visas, and travel support. But we are also committed to helping out those impacted however we can, through financial and in-kind donations, volunteering, and support for refugees. We truly hope that a path to peace can be found quickly.
Thanks, David. Under these circumstances, it's indeed difficult to think about much else at the moment. However, there are things we cannot postpone, such as the financial reporting, and we want to give you the opportunity to share questions with us. Directly linked to that, David, can you comment on the impact you are seeing from that situation David just described on our business directly as well as indirectly?
Sure, I can. I mean, first of all, it's important to understand that there's no direct impact since we don't have operations there. We have a private label supplier working with a local factory in the western Ukraine, but otherwise there's no Zalando business footprint over there. Therefore, there's also no direct impact on the business. What we've seen, however, unfold over the past couple of days in particular is a significant indirect impact, especially when it comes to our business in Central and Eastern Europe. We operate in eight Eastern European countries out of the 23 markets we serve overall.
In these markets we have definitely seen that consumer sentiment was affected quite significantly over the past few days, which I think is understandable, because people probably have different things on their mind at the moment than shopping fashion. That's why we'll continue to closely monitor the situation and obviously adjust our business steering accordingly.
David. Switching a little bit and trying to switch gears a bit, towards you, Robert. There has been two years of big acceleration of e-commerce adoption. Do you see another decade of growth for Zalando?
Yeah. I think, yeah, certainly I see another decade of growth for Zalando. As you know, like, our midterm vision is to achieve more than EUR 30 billion by 2025, so that's more than double as much as we have done, like, in 2021. Long term, we see ourselves in a position to serve more than 10% of the European fashion market, and we're very convinced, working very hard on this growth path. I think that's where we are, where we're going. I guess the last two years, they have certainly accelerated the shift towards online and propelled us well ahead on this path, on this growth path.
As a company, we use these tailwinds very wisely and did a great job on our customer proposition work, market expansion, and as well drove customer loyalty as we have shared with the Zalando Plus milestone that we've hit. As David said, like, 2022 will certainly or very likely be a year with more volatility than usual. We have as well these technical baseline effects from prior year. Yet I'm very confident that with our great team, the proven platform model, our knowledge of how to agile steer our business, we're very well positioned to navigate it well.
Our strategy is strong, our team is strong, and I'm very convinced on our long term. Our next step is EUR 30 billion by 2025, and that's very much our focus.
Thanks, Robert. Going exactly into that direction, there's a question coming from Charlie Muir-Sands from Exane on deepening customer relationship and what's the cause and effect of our Zalando Plus members spending three times more. Are they signing up to Plus because they already are our highest spending customer, or is there a strong sales uplift after they sign up?
Yeah. I think that's a great question. It's something that obviously which is very well researched and understood at Zalando. What is actually correlation effect? What's the causality effect? I can tell you there's a big causality effect, so which as well makes sense. Like, you know, if you have this customer, if you actually commit to paying, like, on an annual membership for service, you as well want to use the same more, yeah? There's a causality effect that actually drives more frequency of visits, that drives more frequency of sales.
This is what we see now, and that is why we're always so focused on driving our Plus membership program into more success because of this causality that's driving our deep relationships.
Cool. Thanks a lot. Going away from deepening to more current topics on the GMV guidance we published today. David, could you talk us through the assumption that you get to the higher and lower of the range here?
Sure. First of all, let me repeat that we, as Robert said, expect to continue our journey in 2022 and continue to deliver strong growth in terms of GMV that will be between 16% and 23%. I think that is basically reflecting three things. First of all, it's reflecting a very strong foundation with by now more than 48 million active customers, partnerships with more than 5,800 brands. Numbers that have significantly increased over the past two years, as consumer demand shifts accelerated towards online, and also brands focused even more on digital channels. I think that sets us up for now continuing to drive strong performance of the business going forward.
The second thing that we obviously need to consider is the very strong baseline of last year, particularly in the first half. For those of you who remember, we, for example, reported 56% growth in GMV in Q1 last year. We also reported 46% growth in GMV for the full first half. That obviously means when we now lap these high baselines in the first half that our growth will be rather lower in the first half and higher in the second half of the year. Because in the second half of last year, we saw things normalize and therefore also up against more normal baselines.
The third fact that I think Robert also mentioned, and we discussed quite a bit also in the keynote and the performance deep dive today, is that we expect a more volatile market environment, primarily driven by weakening consumer sentiment, by continued supply chain challenges, and also by rising inflation concerns. We expect that most of these will be more pronounced in the first half, and probably gradually improve or even fade away in the second half. That is obviously also reflected in the guidance range, and quite frankly, it's also the reason why the guidance range is a bit wider than usual.
The best way to think about the low end and the high end, I think this year, is to say, if these effects fade away quickly, then we'll see our growth rates move more towards the higher end. The longer those effects persist, the more likely it becomes that we'll tend towards the lower end.
Thanks for that, full year picture. Also always a recurring question is like, when looking into the current trading, do you have already first comments you can share, here? That would be highly appreciated.
Yeah. I think coming back to what I just said, I think there are certainly almost the same effects to take into account for Q1 that we just talked about for the full year. For Q1 in particular, I think we have a super strong baseline with 55% or 56% GMV growth even last year. That for sure will mean lower growth in Q1 this year on a year-over-year basis. At least on the second effect, more volatile market environments, as I just explained, we also expect those effects to be more pronounced in Q1 and Q2. Therefore also leading to lower growth rates for Q1 and the first half.
Last but not least, as we briefly mentioned in the beginning, we've seen some early indirect negative impact from the war in the Ukraine, and that will most likely also have an impact on Q1. What does it mean overall? Overall, I think it means that for Q1, we should expect to see our GMV growth be in line with the two-year CAGR that we project for the full year. For the full year, we told you today in our presentation that we aim for a two-year GMV CAGR of between 25% and 28%, which is above our midterm GMV growth corridor of 20%-25%. Still continue to expect very strong growth, and we expect to land in the same two-year CAGR range for Q1.
When we then briefly turn to profitability, I think there, you should probably have in mind the typical seasonality for our business outside of maybe Corona times, which is that Q1 and Q3 are typically a bit softer, either break even or even slightly negative, whereas Q2 and Q4 are our most profitable quarters because they also have the highest share of full price sales. Obviously, there's some additional negative impact to be expected this time, due to the short-term developments that I just called out.
On the short-term developments and looking at your slides, David, is like supply chain inventory shortages. Can you quantify the impact on sales we are seeing for this quarter or the upcoming quarters? Perhaps any color you can give here.
Of course, there is an effect which is real, like due to COVID in the supply chain and also due to transport. Many of our brand partners have also commented on the challenges. We see them in certain areas, especially when it comes to sneakers, footwear, sportswear, where it's most prevalent. Therefore this season, spring/summer 2022, we do see the effects, although the effects are less than we expected them to be last year. We also see improvements. We also expect it to improve throughout the year. We'll have to monitor closely, like what happens to fall/winter 2022. That said, I think also as a platform, we're very, very well positioned as we work with yeah, close to 6,000 brands.
I think we can balance because in our assortment, we are broad. We can have this full range. We can work through wholesale, through partner programs, through Connected Retail in order to create like access for customers. On top, of course, we're also in very close dialogue with our core brands to monitor what's happening and to be able to react if necessary.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. Moving away from current trading and looking more into the future into our platform strategy, perhaps to you, David. When we look into our partner program in more detail, can you discuss that the 2022 EBIT margins will be slightly up on 2019 despite the partner program contribution of more than EUR 1 billion in 2021. Why aren't we seeing that on a gross margin or even in EBIT level yet?
Yeah, let me take this opportunity to maybe take a broader look at the progress of the platform transition, right? As David and I mentioned in the presentations today, we see continued strong progress on our way to become a platform business. We see partner program and Connected Retail growing by more than 75%, year-over-year. ZFS and ZMS, our key enabling services, growing even faster. I think that's obviously a key proof point that we are moving in the right direction, and we also are well on track to reach our 2025 targets that relate to the platform. I think what is also actually great news for us that for 2021, for the first time, our non-merchandise revenue exceeded EUR 1 billion.
I think that is, in a way, the result of the progress we are making with our platform business. I think it's also important to consider, though, that it's one out of more than 10 billion by now, right? It's the business or the P&L, and especially the revenue line is still dominated by our wholesale business model. I think that's one key explanation why you don't really see the progress of the platform transition as much in the P&L as you will see it in future years. We have also talked about it when we think about our long-term target margin.
That being said, I think, obviously we remain committed both to our long-term model, where we project 20%-25% target margin for the partner business, and also to our midterm margin ambition to move closer to 6% by 2025. That will be largely driven by our continued progress with the platform. To just maybe talk about one last key item that I wanted to mention. When we look at the profitability development or also profit contribution of our platform business year over year and also as it stands for 2021, there are two key messages. First of all, it is already highly accretive to the group margin.
Second of all, the profitability has increased year-over-year, and therefore, we are definitely also on track to reach our long-term margin targets for that part of our business.
Thanks, David. Going more into the partner program, there's a question coming from Miriam from Morgan Stanley . What explains the difference in our partner program share we are seeing across different markets? Is it simply scale or maturity? How does this trajectory of our partner program in newer markets compare to our home market here in Germany?
Yeah. I mean, first to note that Zalando, of course, also the Zalando penetration looks different across different markets. I think there is also like the Zalando maturity in certain markets that play a role. Then our partners, of course, they also have to develop the capabilities to ship internationally, which is usually a challenge to actually have, like, the right providers and all the connections in place you need. Which is also exactly a reason why we offer ZFS and believe very much in our own logistics networks to actually help partners get there, because that is actually, you know, this, you know, offers like all our European markets to partners quite immediately. We also see a strong traction.
You see also, like, if you solve these challenges for partners, how it then develops very quickly. I mean, if we look at, for example, Switzerland, how it develops once you overcome, like, the hurdle for partners and offer them through ZFS, like, an easy way in, that you also see, like, the partner program share developing very quickly. I think in future, so we see markets that will develop fairly quickly on the partner program share. We also see a big lever to actually offer really relevant assortment locally. For example, in Spain, we can even utilize, like, the Connected Retail proposition to actually get access to, you know, locally relevant assortment and offer that locally to customers.
Which I think is a big lever also for us to, you know, to be even more relevant in the specific markets.
Yeah. I think that was a good hint, and also, somebody already assumed some kind of a question here. We are also providing more logistics services for our brand partners. What kind of additional service can we exactly give to these Connected Retail partners? What is here in our minds and what are we able to share here already? Not sure. David.
Yeah, happy to jump in here. Obviously the type of logistics service that enables connected retailers is a bit different from the type of logistics service that we've built for our brands because those stores essentially are small fulfillment centers. That's the whole beauty of the model. Therefore, they don't require as much help with warehousing as our brand partners do when they use ZFS. But they definitely can benefit from our capability in the area of shipping and returns. That's why we are, especially for 2022, now very much focused in making sure that we can support them with more efficient, more convenient and also more economical returns handling.
which we think will make the model much more attractive for many of them, given that the cost to serve can be dramatically reduced.
Sticking with logistics, also kind of an evergreen here, when we talk about our logistics platform. To grow our GMV by EUR 4 billion per year, we also need to add 3-4 new distribution centers every year. But apparently some outsiders don't seem that we are on track, on pace here. Perhaps you can comment on are we getting enough throughput with that via our existing network?
I think our existing network is well set up to support current business volumes and also obviously the growth for the year to come. Please don't forget, we just at the end of last year took online a completely new facility, the biggest so far, close to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which gives us ample room for growth. We are obviously continuing our ambitious network build-out program, which aims to add more than seven additional warehouses by 2025. Several projects are underway in France, in Germany, and in Poland. All those have been announced last year, and we are working on a few more that will be announced soon.
From our perspective, our network build-out is well on track and even so well on track that we announce today that we also now feel comfortable to open up our network to support our brand partners also across more channels than just Zalando.
Exactly. Also another question exactly on that last sentence by David to you, David Schneider. Could you talk a little bit more about the outsourcing of the logistics to brand partners and how this will be charged for? Will it be the same way as Zalando Fulfillment services, so as a cost plus model, or and what is the level of adoption that could be. Perhaps any thoughts you can share here.
I mean, we've, you know, also like in the past years, we've been in a lot of discussion with our brands, how can we actually open up our capabilities more and more. To closer work together, I mean, we know, brands invest into their direct to consumer approach, and of course, they ship not only like through Zalando, but also through their own eCom, and other channels. So what we see is that, you know, by opening our capabilities as we have really the best network for fashion, for fashion logistics, why not open that up and actually help brands to really, also go more direct to consumer?
Because I think that's how we wanna position ourselves with brands to enable their digital business and be part of their really digital strategy and not creating any barriers. I think there is like very clear wins, I mean, for partners. Again, it gives them access to like all our markets all over Europe. I think obviously in combination with like having Zalando as a strong channel for them, it also creates like, you know, being able to consolidate parcels. Yeah, I think also a lot of economic benefits that are in there. Of course, they can make use of like all these convenient investments in innovation also from a sustainability angle.
All these investments we grow across Europe, across all brands, they can make use of that. At the same time, I think we also have the benefits, or our customers have the benefits, as we tap into, you know, better availability, stronger inventory pools. Again, I think also the strong benefit for partners, we do not have to split inventories in that sense, which makes, of course, a big effect. We can say that brands do not like to fragment their inventory. We believe that's a strong win-win-win. As again, our partners win. I think for customers, we have a strong benefit.
I think for us, of course, it's also interesting to build out like really this infrastructure, yeah, and a great business model to build on for us in future.
Yeah. Thanks for that. There's also a financially related question just coming in, a warehouse question from Adam from Deutsche Bank. Perhaps, David, you can comment shortly on that. Like, what is the return on capital for spending CapEx on a new distribution center and fulfilling the logistics for partners? Is only available if they sell enough product via Zalando? And perhaps any thoughts you may share here?
Sure. Obviously, when we evaluate these projects and take decision on such a large CapEx spending, we take a very close look at the business case for each of these locations. Although I obviously cannot go into a lot of detail here, what I can confirm is that all these projects come with a very attractive and high NPV, and they also come with a super fast payback, for example, in the automation technology, which is really the bulk of the CapEx investment that we are talking about here, which typically pays itself in just 3-4 years, whereas we can use the facility for much longer. I think that gives you an indication of the return on capital for such projects.
For sure, as we mentioned today, this offer will not be limited to partners selling on Zalando. It will also be open for partners to use for other channels. Obviously, we would expect most partners to find it very useful that they can also tap into the large customer base that we can offer at Zalando, but it's not a prerequisite as such.
Cool. Thanks a lot. A little bit related to logistics, but also evergreen here at Zalando is like return rates. Now we have been seeing a big benefit over the last two years. Perhaps, David, you can comment on like, does the 2022 guidance include a continued benefit from lower return rates? That's the first one, and then perhaps also a little bit comment on the marketing spend as a percentage of sales, given the more volatile consumer demand environment, you also flagged and others are also seeing here.
Sure. In terms of return rates, we definitely assume an ongoing normalization and therefore only a minor or smaller impact on 2022. Overall, we actually expect our fulfillment cost ratio to increase in 2022, driven by the normalization of return rates, but also by our continued investments to drive convenience for Plus members and also to make our operations and services more and more sustainable, for example, in the area of sustainable packaging. When we think about our marketing expenses for this year, we assume a rather flat development year-over-year. As we have repeatedly stressed today, we'll steer our business in a very agile manner. As you know, if you follow us for a while now, we are steering marketing primarily based on ROI.
We are not sticking to a predetermined budget, but we'll rather adjust our spending according to the opportunities that we see in the market.
Thanks. Yeah. Moving away a little bit from logistics, going more into our longer term, there's a question on ZMS, and Robert, I think you are the right one to answer that one is like, can you expand and explain a bit further what role ZMS and other Zalando data services, data monetization in general will play in our starting point for fashion strategy?
Yeah. Sure. Like, you know, as our platform proposition towards customers is kind of expanding and we want eventually, like, you know, every fashion item to be available on our propositions. There's as well, like, you know, the question like, what's actually the most effective way that actually brands can as well engage with customers as well on Zalando and how can they actually tell their stories, especially in the environments like, where there's, I think, a lot of offer available. This is really where the ZMS service actually helps our brand partners to tell their story, tell their brand, and as well shed more light on specific articles that they want, like, you know, the customers to more engage with.
This is the purpose of ZMS. As we have highlighted in our long-term model, we assume this would be like, you know, in the area of 3%-4% of the GMV. That would be like the ZMS in terms of our platform proposition. We are very, very happy so far with the developments of how ZMS business actually is assumed by the brand partners.
Thanks, Robert. There's also another question coming from Christian, from Hauck & Aufhäuser. David, given your comfortable net cash position, how do you think about inorganic growth, and where would you see possibilities for acquisition, e.g., be it in beauty or tech?
Well, first of all, I think it's great to have that comfortable cash position, as you call it, because then it really enables us to take that full cycle long-term view on the business, right? And to make sure that we can actually make all the necessary investments that allow us to achieve our midterm ambition of 30 billion GMV in 2025, and also our long-term ambition of serving more than 10% of the total European fashion market. Apart from that, you see us mainly investing into our own infrastructure and in our capabilities, obviously also our technology platform, as part of these capabilities. Yes, we'll most likely continue to also look at inorganic opportunities, but primarily those that help us advance when it comes to building, scaling, and innovating our capabilities.
For example, the last acquisition that we did was around size and fit. I think you should expect us to do similar acquisitions in the future when they can help us accelerate our journey towards being the starting point of fashion.
Okay, thanks. Before coming back a little bit to our current and 2022 outlook, perhaps another more strategic question, sticking with you, David, on a second is like our financial capabilities, and probably mainly referring here to our Zalando Payments offering. Do you see any potential to include this as a service to brands as part of the partner program over time?
Well, the thing is, all the brands and also connected retailers that participate in our platform use our payment services by default, right? It is actually part of our partner program and Connected Retail offer and part of the reason why brands and connected retailers pay a commission to us. Part of that commission is payment services related. I think it's still a good question because we definitely see that we've built a very strong payments capability. We process more than EUR 20 billion transaction volume through our internal payment systems. We've also built a very strong Buy Now, Pay Later offering, which actually accounts for more than two-thirds of that payment volume.
It's the most popular payment method for our customers in many of our markets, and it's also something that has obviously helped us to drive both customer satisfaction and also conversion. Therefore we definitely are evaluating different opportunities on how we can leverage this strong capability, particularly in the area of Buy Now, Pay Later, and also find ways to offer that to partners also outside of Zalando.
Okay, thanks a lot. David, looking into a little bit more the brands itself. There was also a question again from Charlie, from Exane BNP. Would you also consider helping brands with their e-commerce technology as well as the logistics?
I mean, we already help also beyond logistics. I think logistics, again, it's a very strong and clear value add for our partners, and that's why we wanna open that up and really enable brands not only for our channel, also across, like, different touch points. Like marketing, for example, is also a good example. With ZMS, I think we're also developing capabilities that really help brands to engage with their audience. Target, like, the right audience and help them position the message and their brand in the right audience. I think we can actually build on that because part of that is also, like, strong customer insights, and really help brands using those insights, be in product development, but also in the messaging towards customers.
I think building on that, yes, I think there are, like, ways to support brands overall in their digital strategy. I think it also gets more and more holistic how we can actually help them through our capabilities, and not only on Zalando but also beyond that.
David, you stated in your presentation earlier today as the pre-recording on the customer metrics and how they have developed and what nice positive impact we have seen is. There's a question from Jürgen, from Kepler Cheuvreux asking: Can you provide some additional details where you expect to see the biggest changes with regard to our customer metrics in 2022?
Sure. I think if we look back at the past 24 months that have driven some exceptional developments for the business overall, but also for our key customer metrics. I think for me, the two that stand out in particular are the one around our active customer growth and particularly the acceleration in new customer growth that I've also focused on in my performance deep dive today. The second key thing to highlight would probably be the basket size development, which obviously benefited significantly from the lower return rate that we've already talked about today. These are probably also the two key metrics where I would expect a normalization. In the active customers, we would expect our new customer growth to return to, let's say, pre-pandemic levels.
On the basket size, we would expect to see the normalization of the return rate lead to a decrease in the basket size for this year.
Thanks. The last question, David, is going to you again on competitive pricing. Adam from Deutsche Bank is asking, Zalando was more competitive on pricing in the second half of 2021, but now looks set to increase prices in 2022. Does this suggest you will be a price taker rather than a price setter? Any color you may give here would be helpful.
Maybe to answer it first from a strategic angle. For us, price is not our main differentiator. It's not our goal to lead on price. For us, it's a lot more important to reinvest into experience and engage with customers through that experience and through a great assortment access, providing like, you know, anything that is relevant for customers. Telling, like, all the great, like, brand stories and engage with, like, content. It's about creating, like, experiences, you know, on our propositions, be it, like, for fashion or for beauty or for designer or for pre-owned. Yeah. That's important. Also, you know, convincing through a great convenience experience and then linking everything through, like, our plus. I could be talking about that for a while.
I think those components are for us far more important. You know, in future, we'll think even further around, like, how to engage with customers in even better way and also entertain them more. Concretely to, like, price developments. Yes, we do see price increases in the market. We're, like, also in close discussions with our brand partners. It looks like we have price increases in, like, a mid- to high-single-digit area, which I think we have, like, over the past decade, we haven't experienced such a shift in pricing.
That is something I think that we will see and where we also see, like, prices adapting and where we also closely monitor, like, what is, like, the customer reaction. How do they also shift, like in, you know, different price buckets. I think also across, like, our platform as we have this very broad assortment and work with, you know, and almost 6,000 partners. I think we also have the leeway to also, yeah, adapt to that and offer what is most relevant for customers.
Thanks. Yeah, that concludes today's Q&A session with the both Davids here on stage and Robert virtually. Thanks everyone for attending today's full year publication. As always, we'll be on the road to discuss our results in the next couple of days. We'll also host an analyst roundtable in the week. If there are any remaining questions, do not hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, stay well and yeah, get well through these times and hope to see you soon. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.