Sneaker Trends and Fitness Goals; A Senior Buyer’s Role at Zalando

Freddy Legatzki, Senior Buyer Sneakers at Zalando, joins Janine in the studio to discuss his career as well as Zalando's Summer of Sports.

First up, Freddy explains what a senior buyer role entails, from analysing trade numbers and understanding trend insights to choosing products for Zalando. “Sneaker heads” need to listen closely for updates on upcoming trends in sneaker styles and brands.

Freddy and Janine talk about his passion for the new sport of Hyrox, a fitness endurance race that combines running and strength exercises. Freddy explains the buzz that he gets from Hyrox, from upcoming marathons, and most of all from seeing people wearing the sneakers that he’s designed for Zalando.

Freddy’s three “Pieces of Me” include his love for running, the book 'How Bad Do You Want It?' by Matt Fitzgerald, which explores the psychology of mind over muscle in sports, and his latest sneaker design for Zalando.

To find out more about careers like Freddy’s at Zalando visit jobs.zalando.com

Transcript

JANINE

Hello and welcome to Piece of Me, the podcast by Zalando. I am Janine Matos, your host and Senior Portfolio Manager for Zalando Technology Foundation here at Zalando. In each episode, I welcome an inspirational expert from Zalando to take a deep dive into the fashion and tech retail industry. They also share lots of practical tips and what you should dare to do more to help you on your own career and work journey. By the way, if you're interested in careers at Zalando, click the link to our job page in the show notes.

Each guest brings in three items as they reveal their motivation, stories, and what they learned along the way. A piece that is close to their heart, one from their career and one from their time at Zalando. So let's get started by meeting my guest for today, Freddy Legatzki, Senior Buyer Sneakers. Hi, Freddy. How are you? 

FREDDY

Hi, Janine. I'm good. How are you? I'm well. Thank you. 

JANINE

I'm glad to have you here. It's not only about the position you're working on that we'll find out a little bit more about. but also actually about a great event that Zalando is doing this summer where you are also taking part of, the Summer Sports Event. 

FREDDY

Yes, exciting times ahead, full summer of sports. Yes, there's a lot going on this year. So it's really exciting. Zalando jumped kind of on the train, so let's do something for the employees. 

JANINE

But before we go into that, can you please list the three items that you brought? So something that's close to your heart. What item is that?

FREDDY

So for this, I had to decide between my coffee machine and the book and I thought the book is a bit more handy. So I decided to bring a book connected to sports, but I think I will explain about it a bit later. 

JANINE

Although I do think that book and coffee go well together. So you could also have brought both. And the second items, we actually did not ask you to bring something that is connected to your career, but actually sports items. So which sports item did you bring?

FREDDY

So for that, I actually went for my fast classes. So some classes for running. 

JANINE

So looking forward to the story behind that one and Zalando item. What did you choose? 

FREDDY

So here, as you said, I'm working as a senior buyer in sneakers. I brought a sneaker that I designed more recently that launched on Zalando. So one of our Zalando exclusive sneakers. 

JANINE

You designed them?

FREDDY (02:19.214)

Yes, actually, I did the math before I came here. think now three years in the position, it must have been over 250 shoes that I designed. that's basically something I do, but also what I love. So I'm a sneaker head myself. I'm very much into sneakers. So it's always nice getting to design your own sneakers for our customers. 

JANINE

I am really excited to know more about that and how I maybe can get into that too. But before we actually talk about also the three pieces and the Summer of Sports, which you are participating in. Of course, I would like to know a bit more about what a senior buyer sneakers does. I mean, overall, the name already gives some insights, but how does a day look like for a senior buyer? What is your focus? 

FREDDY

So that's not so easy to answer because surely this depends always on the timing of the year and where we are in our buying cycle. At the moment, for example, we are just finalising thepre -planning phase for spring, summer 25 for all the products then launching in 2025, at least the first half year. And then we are also currently already going then into the buying phase. So we are seeing our brands, are then seeing the collections that they offer. And then we basically decide on which products we will buy for Zalando. So this is easily set the daily job, right? But it goes more into a lot of analysers weekly trade numbers. 

JANINE

So you analyse the performance of the last week. You then also trade with these numbers? 

FREDDY

So with our brands, see, is there opportunities to get more of the stock that we are selling very well? Is there other actions that we could do? But then also we are looking already into future seasons. So we also discussed already a fall winter 25, so way ahead of time, but the brands already showing us the first concepts and asking us to provide trend insights, what we are believing will be the next big thing. Where do we see our investments going?

So it's really like a lot of seasons that we are currently working with. 

JANINE

What is the sneaker of 2025? 

FREDDY

2024, think it's Zamba and I get still off a lot of Salomon and New Balance. What is 2025? I'm very biased because I'm also looking after the Adidas brand, but definitely Adidas has a run. They will bring a lot of low profile shoes back. I'm not sure how familiar you are with The Tech One, for example, it was a huge hit in the early 2000s. So this is something that we could foresee as one of the future trends. More in the next months, you will see more the retro running coming big. So seventies running, there is definitely some heat coming up from Adidas, but also Puma, New Balance, ASICS, they will all play a role in the next year. Interesting. 

JANINE

But I'm a Nike person!

FREDDY

Nike at the moment had a huge run at the moment. They are slowing a bit down, but never write them off. Nike will hit hard soon. So keep your eyes open also for Nike. 

JANINE

I did move away and went a little bit to New Balance the last two years. So I opened up to other sneaker brands. That's very nice. 

FREDDY

This is also what we see actually. It's a diverse approach from our consumers as well. What is really interesting are the smaller brands, up and coming brands, Hookah, Mizuno on running. A lot of especially sports wear companies really making moves. 

JANINE

And that's great to see that there's more diversity in the sneaker space at the moment. I feel back in the days, sounds very old. You had that one brand, it was like either you were an Air Force One person or you were the Adidas Superstar and you would just wear three, four years in a row in different colours or even just re-buy them.

And now I also notice with my friends who were for years only just it had to be the swoosh with Nike and nothing else. And now they're like, well, actually I'm getting into Salomon or New Balance and actually looking left and right what's out there in brands. 

FREDDY

Yeah, that's what we are seeing as well, right? The Air Force One and the Dunks, they were everywhere the last couple of years. Now the Samba is taking a bit of this position, but it's good to see that it's not limited to the Samba. Adidas has a broad assortment of similar shoes. But then, as you said, New Balance is super big at the moment. ASICS is having a run and it's not slowing down. And people really want to have a more diverse sneaker assortment than they probably had some years ago. 

JANINE

Which kind of sneakers do you buy? Is it overall man sneakers or is it like more lifestyle? Is there even a category?

FREDDY (06:44.162)

Actually, yes, we are split into categories. So I'm overseeing the lifestyle part of the business. So in that sense, all the Adidas originals, sneaker for adults, I'm looking after. what other categories do we have at Zalando? We are clustered in different portfolios, as you just said, for example, the sports category, what we will probably also touch base a bit later on. Then you have the streetwear category, a modern category, a premium category. So it's really clustered by how also the consumers would group certain brands and this is how we structured. 

JANINE

Let's now move further to the summer of sports at Zalando. We have the Europe Cup, have Olympics, Paralympics this summer. It's a huge summer actually. And so what is Zalando doing this summer? 

FREDDY

I think it's exciting to see also the mood, how it changed, right? Like I think you can really sense it when you go out and feel now the Euros are around, everybody's hyped.

I think we haven't seen this in years and especially then having it in their own country definitely helps. And what Zalando is doing is actually a lot so starting probably internally in Zalando, we have like all these nice events. We had like a football tournament, we had a volleyball tournament, but now with the Euros, we also have like a streaming opportunity. So Zalando provided like a setup where the employees could watch the games together in a very nice auditorium with a big screen.

JANINE

What I think is great because it brings the people together, but gives us the opportunity to participate in these events and share our feelings towards the sports together. 

FREDDY

And the same is then also planned for the Olympics actually that we have a live coverage of the events. And then when it comes to the external actions, I think there's already certain campaigns. So they have teamed up with several different sport people. have like a campaign with Robert Lewandowski. We have the French national player, Kamavinga, who is then also having a story on Zalando where he shows his favorite pieces. So there's a lot going on in that sense and the whole sports category will bring up even more in the next weeks. So everyone should follow Zalando on Instagram and of course check out the fashion store, the Zalando .de or which country the people are.

FREDDY (08:57.484)

There is so much going on. have completely revamped the sports hub. So I think it's definitely worth keeping an eye on that and following this closely. 

JANINE

And Zalando is actually also very invested in making sure that we employees actually can work out. And we have also at Zalando our peer program, meaning we have our gym, but then we also have employees who actually offer sports courses like yoga or high intensity.

Do you participate in any of them or do you actually offer one of those courses? 

FREDDY

Actually, I don't. should probably, but I'm super invested at the moment with my own training. So I follow a very strict training plan. So there's not a lot of room for these kinds of activities, but I think it's a great offer that Zalando has. So the gym is great. I think it's in the seventh floor. You can really have like a nice view over Berlin. Also we teaming up with brands, there was more recently an event with Nike going on, Lululemon had a like a yoga session. So I think there's also lot of programs happening for our consumers, but also for our employees. It's very great to see how Zalando is invested into moving the people. 

JANINE

That's true. So what you did say you have your own workout plan and your own kind of sports that you do. What is it called? Because actually I was not aware of it. I would love to try it out. I'm still trying to find someone who will try it out with me. What is the name again? 

FREDDY

Yeah. So basically the main sports I'm doing is actually called HIROX. It's a very young sport that was just founded some years ago in Germany in Hamburg, but by now it's a global sports. It's growing and it's in fitness endurance race. just calling out the name probably doesn't help to understand what it is. So probably already explaining your next question. It's a fitness race. That is really based on the principle of bringing running and strength exercises or endurance exercises together. The concept is you have eight runs and in between these eight runs, you always have like one exercise to do. So you do a one kilometre run, then you do an exercise, one kilometre run, one exercise. And these exercises span from the more endurance side, like one kilometre of rowing to something more strength based where you need to push a sled, a very heavy sled, or you do sandbag lunges. So you have like a heavy sandbag in the neck and then need to lunge for 100 meters. 

JANINE

I won't try it. It's okay. 

FREDDY

I will wait for that try. I will make you a believer. I think that's a cool thing about the sports. It's very inclusive. So this is also what's the aim of the sports actually when they founded it. The concept is really like that. It's basic movements. It's running, it's pushing it's dragging something. basically every person should be able to do these exercises in their own time.

JANINE (11:48.462)

So let's now move on and talk about actually the pieces you brought. You were between a book and a coffee machine as your close your heart and you decided for a book. So which book did you bring? 

FREDDY

So the book is called How Bad Do You Want It? And it was written by Matt Fitzgerald, who is a sports journalist and an endurance sports person himself. And basically it is talking about the psychology of mind over muscle. So he really takes real sports events and he writes it so nicely you almost think you're in a broadcast and you see it in front of your eyes how he describes like certain races. He then breaks down what happened in that moment psychologically and what you can take as a learning from these real life events and from these sports people. Yeah, he really goes deep into the whole psychology behind sports and that it isn't the body that breaks first. It's usually the mind and how often you could still push throughout the pain and whenever you think you are done, there's still something left and you can still go on. 

JANINE

You have a favourite quote or favourite part in that book that you sometimes even like to reread or remember? The headline or the title of the book is already something I remind myself quite often about like, how bad do you want it? I think this is really the sense I getting and then it always keeps me going because I then remember all the lessons that he is showing.

JANINE (13:19.042)

But moving forward, it's about you and your second item, which you said are your running glasses. And let me guess, you are running soon a marathon. So that's why you brought your running glasses. 

FREDDY

Yes. Yes. No, but it's also a piece at summer, right? So I also will wear it more often now in the summer, but I also brought it because it's fun. It's one of these items. Some years back you would have watched from the outside, the running community and seeing people with these so -called fast classes, right? And you would probably say, that's a bit too much. But once you're into running and you have tried these glasses, you love them. It's one of the items I really do love. It's completely changing your personality. Once you put them on, you are faster. Believe it or not, it's the glasses that make you fast. But honestly, like the it's it's an item that I really do enjoy wearing during the summers. Yeah, therefore I thought I bring it because it's definitely a game changer. It gives you a whole new personality. 

JANINE

You have more than one pair?

FREDDY

Actually, I don't, but I'm having some on my wish list and I probably will do a new purchase because surely I need to motivate myself for the upcoming marathon. Usually have a goal for a marathon. 

JANINE

Do you have a goal? How fast would you like to run it? 

FREDDY

Yes. This year in Berlin, I tried to break the two hour 50 mark. So last year was the first time I was breaking the three hours. So now I said like, let's, let's go hard. Let's do two 50. wow. So that means each kilometer, how many minutes? It's four. 4 minutes per kilometer.

JANINE (14:53.09)

Let's move on to your third piece, your Zalando item, which you said are the sneakers that you designed yourself. How did you start designing your own sneakers? 

FREDDY

Basically, this is part of the job, right? So I came in to work as a senior buyer in sneakers and we already had this program up and running with our brands where we have like the opportunity to design Zalando specific products that we exclusively sell on the Zalando platform. And over the years, we have built this up quite significantly and very successfully. And it's definitely one of the favourite parts of my job. It's just really a small amount of the time invest surely, but it feels like you're doing something very meaningful. Something that you are very proud of. Every shoe is like a little baby of yours. And yeah, since I'm very much into sneakers as well, it's also done quite nicely to see what you can do and how the products in the end also sell and how. much the consumers love it. So I love walking down the street wherever I am and see our sneakers. Last year I had a little trip through South America and even there I spotted some of our Zalando exclusive products. And this always gives me a connection to the person I don't know, right? It's a person walking down the street and I feel we are connected because I always think like you have a good taste, you wear these products. It always connects me and it always makes me proud seeing people running around with products that I have designed.

JANINE

You said you brought actually a sneaker that you designed that recently has been released or is being released soon. How does a sneaker look like? 

FREDDY

So the sneaker is basically an Adidas product. It's the Adidas Gazelle Indoor. We have designed actually two colour ways. It's like a main theme with the colour pistachio. For the one that I brought, it's like a green, brown, off -white version.

Yeah, and the cool thing about this release is that we have teamed up with highsnobriety on this, where we designed together with highsnobriety for the very first time a product for Zalando. And this is definitely also something special to my heart, since working with highsnobriety is a big thing. This product is definitely close to my heart. And this is also the last release we had with Adidas exclusively on Zalando. 

JANINE

And are they always marked on our store as Zalando exclusive so that people really know?

FREDDY (17:10.316)

These are really just Zalando and actually most of them were even designed by our own employees. I don't think the consumers really understand the process behind it, but they can find the products via the exclusive tag that we put on the PDPs. So you would find a little flag that says exclusive. So this is then really a product that you can only buy on Zalando. 

JANINE

And we actually also have on Zalando a sneaker calendar with the hottest release and the hottest drops so that we become the one platform for multi brand sneakers, right? 

FREDDY

Yeah, generally speaking, we have done quite a lot in the streetwear space, we are getting more credibility becoming more streetwear focused. So the release calendar is one of the options we have actually then also launched our own Instagram channel, the Zalando Street channel. But then I think the biggest investment we have done was the acquisition of highsnobrietyl ast year that then also will help us to create and produce stories that are very close to our consumers' hearts and excite them, keep them engaged and also bring them back to Zalando and see what exciting new stories we have on weekly basis. 

JANINE

So, Freddie, before you wrap up, I have a little question to you and what you would actually like to say to our listeners about what they should dare to do or dare to try out.

FREDDY

I think it's definitely a HYROX right? So if you still looking for a sport competition, think it's the right place to go. But generally I would say just find something that excites you, something that you really are interested in and just there to have fun, stick to it, just try out new things. Thank you so much for being my guest today, 

JANINE

Freddie, It was super interesting getting to know what a senior buyer does and of course, how to motivate yourself on how to work out and stick to anything you start. 

FREDDY

Thanks for having me Janine. It was very fun talking with you. 

JANINE

Thank you all so much for listening. If you'd like to know more about careers at Zalando, go to jobs .zalando .de. You'll find that link in the show notes or check out our Instagram page inside Zalando.

Our next episode is coming in two weeks and I'll be talking to another guest from Zalando about life inside the fashion and tech retail industry. And of course, they're three pieces of me.