Otto Group launches open e-commerce platform for the digital generation

“E-commerce is still at the beginning of a new digital era,”

said Benjamin Otto, entrepreneur and CEO of Collins. “Our goal is to make shopping for the young generation as unique and inspiring, as it is their digital world.”

German-based Otto Group, the world's largest mail order company, finally unveiled its Collins Project this week, an open e-commerce platform designed with the digital generation in mind. The Otto Group has invested a three-digit million amount into the new open e-commerce business model, which was conceived last summer by Otto and Tarek Müller, co-head of Collins and Managing Shops.

The open e-commerce platform is based on newly developed technology, which helped create new approaches to fashion third parties in the form of content, social media and mobile applications. “The best ideas come to life not solely in a company alone, but often by working with individual creative minds, with which we can open up a new dimension for online trading,” noted Müller,

From this open business concept came the foundation of the online store, About You, which went live on Monday. The website lets its users create a profile and then choose from a multi-brand offer of around 50,000 products, via a portfolio of apps that have been developed by external partners. The external partners receive a commission of the sales in return and are able to install their apps via a developers center.

The Collins project previously launched a sharp-oriented fashion store this March, known as Edited, which currently offers over 100 brands via a strongly magazine and social media content based site. “With Collins, we have created an eco-system, that combines the younger generation newest additions to online shopping offers - and the strengths of a start-up with the power of the Otto Group,” concluded Otto.