Commerce: Confcommercio, 100 thousand shops disappeared in 10 years
Between 2012 and 2022, a total of over 99,000 retail businesses and 16,000 itinerant businesses disappeared. Only accommodation and catering activities are increasing with a growth of hotels, bars and restaurants of +10,275 structures. In the same period, the foreign presence in commerce grew, both in terms of number of companies (+44 thousand) and in terms of employees (+107 thousand) and Italian activities and employees decreased (-138 thousand and -148 thousand respectively). It is the photograph taken from the analysis of the Confcommercio Research Office “Business demography in Italian cities”. However, in trade, the loss of the number of Italian companies is only partially recovered through the growth of foreign activities, which today amount to14.4% of the total.
It is a phenomenon, the reduction of commercial activities and the growth of the tourist offer, which, focusing the analysis on 120 medium-large cities, are more pronounced in the historic centers than in the rest of the municipalityand, with the South characterized by a greater commercial liveliness compared to Center-North. All the activities considered today amount to just under 884,000 units which is the sum of retail outlets, street vendors and hotels and public establishments plus other commercial activities outside the shops.
The modification and reduction of the levels of service offered by shops in fixed locations borders on the risk of commercial desertification of our cities where, in the last 10 years, the commercial density has gone from 9 to 7.3 shops per thousand inhabitants (a drop of almost 20%). To avoid the most serious effects of this phenomenon, for proximity trade there is no other way than to focus on efficiency and productivity also through greater innovation and a redefinition of the offer.
The presence of street vendors from squares and city streets is decreasing, a clearly visible phenomenon from the reduction of licenses by almost 20% in the decade 2012-2020. A phenomenon due to the rationalization process, in addition to that deriving from the loss of demand, partly replaced by online sales.
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