These efforts, roughly a year in the making, may foster a rare European tech player able to give Silicon Valley heavy-hitters a run for their money across the region, still one of the world’s largest — and most profitable — markets.

“If you want to be the dominant player in a geographical area, you need to go beyond being just a traditional e-commerce player,” said Erik Mitteregger, a board member at Kinnevik, a Swedish investment firm that was an early Zalando investor and still owns a 32 percent stake. “It’s a necessary move.”

Zalando’s inspiration from China, though, comes with challenges.

Despite domestic dominance, Chinese players like Alibaba have yet to successfully replicate their business model overseas. Online shopping habits in Europe also are somewhat different from those in China. And Amazon and European competitors, including ASOS and Yoox Net-a-Porter, may yet outmuscle Zalando with their traditional takes on e-commerce.

For most Americans — and even some Europeans outside its core German-speaking markets — Zalando is not a household name.

It began in 2008 as a Berlin start-up founded by Mr. Gentz and David Schneider, two business school graduates who once tried — and failed — to build a Latin American rival to Facebook. By 2014, Zalando had become the largest public offering in the European tech sector since 2000. It counts Rocket Internet, a Berlin incubator known for copying successful online business ideas, and DST Global, a backer of Facebook, Twitter and Alibaba, among its early investors.

To meet the needs of Europe’s national markets, Zalando has tweaked its offerings. In Germany, where few people use credit cards, consumers can pay with an online service linked to their bank accounts after receiving clothes in the mail. In Italy, it worked with a local delivery company so people wary of goods not arriving could pay in cash upon receipt of their orders.