(Tiper Stock Exchange) – Over the span of a decade – from 2012 to 2022 – are over 99 thousand activities disappeared of retail trade and 16,000 itinerant trade businesses. The alarm comes from Confcommerce following an analysis by the Research Office which takes stock of the situation in the sector. In the same period, in fact, they are growing hotels, bars and restaurants (+10,275) and there is also one growth of the foreign presence in commerce, both in terms of the number of businesses (+44 thousand), and in terms of employees (+107 thousand) and one reduction of Italian activities and employment (respectively -138 thousand and -148 thousand).
Focusing on the analysis 120 medium-large citiesthe reduction of shops is more marked in historical centres compared to the rest of the municipality, with the South characterized by a greater commercial vivacity compared to the Centre-North.
The commercial fabric is also changing inside the historical centres: always fewer traditional goods stores (books and toys -31.5%, furniture and hardware -30.5%, clothing -21.8%) and more services and technology (pharmacies +12.6%, computers and telephony +10.8%), activities of accommodation (+43.3%) and catering (+4%).
You feel the risk of a real one commercial desertification of our cities where, in the last 10 years, the commercial density has increased from 9 to 7.3 shops per thousand inhabitantsa drop of almost 20%.
“Commercial desertification does not only concern businesses, but society as a whole because it means fewer services, livability and safety. Urban redevelopment needs to be accelerated with a wider and more selective use of European funds from the PNRR and the involvement of the social partners”, says the president of Confcommercio Carlo Sangalli.
For the survival of proximity tradeaccording to Confcommercio, there is no other way than focus on efficiency and productivityalso through greater innovation and a redefinition of the offer e on omnichanneli.e. the use of the online channel as well, which has grown exponentially in recent years, with sales going from 16.6 billion in 2015 to 48.1 billion in 2022.
The activities present in Italy today, overall, are 884,000, which is the sum of details in fixed locations, street vendors and hotels and public establishments, plus other commercial activities outside the shops. And if on the one hand it is possible to state that the productive and commercial fabric has held up very well during the pandemic and has successfully gone through the most difficult phases of the energy crisis, at the same time it is necessary to underline the loss of the commercial fabric in fixed locations, with a reduction in the number of points of sale of around 4% between 2019 and 2022, a value that exceeds 9% for street vendors. Compared to 2012, the losses today are worth almost 100,000 units for retail in fixed locations, of which about a quarter in the 120 cities considered.