Confesercenti's warning: "2024 a year to forget: 61 thousand shops closed"

MILAN – A year to forget for the retail sector. According to a Confesercenti analysis, between January and December, just 23,188 new retail businesses started up, while 61,634 closed their doors permanently: a ratio close to 1 opening for every 3 closures, the worst in the last ten years. This is what emerges from an analysis conducted by Confesercenti on Chamber of Commerce data. The slowdown in consumption, the lack of credit and the demographic curve are weighing heavily. If the trend does not reverse, traders warn, the risk is to reach zero openings as early as 2034.

"Commercial desertification is a huge problem both on an economic and social level. Unfortunately, up to now nothing or little has been done to stem the disappearance of small shops", underlines Patrizia De Luise, national president of Confesercenti. "The increasingly concrete prospect is that the distribution channel that has made our products known throughout the world will be definitively marginalized. The risk is to transfer total control of commercial distribution to a few monopolists and to the large multinationals that dominate the online platforms. A damage also for consumers".

The survey highlights how the birth rate crisis in commerce is now a structural phenomenon: in 2014, there were 43,324 openings, equal to just over 118 per day, while in 2024, the daily rate of registrations dropped to 63.5, almost half. A collapse that has become increasingly faster starting from 2020: if the trend of these last four years continues without reversals, by 2034 the number of new openings could drop to zero, marking the end of commerce as we know it. Without more generational change, the progressive disappearance of independent shops from urban centers would in fact be inevitable.

However, the dynamics of closures are also worrying. While registrations are decreasing, store closures continue to increase, for the fourth year in a row. In 2024, approximately 169 businesses closed their doors every day, compared to 139 in 2020, the year of Covid. An increase that brings the ratio between closures and new registrations close to 3 to 1 (2.7): in 2014, it was 1.5 to 1.

Although the negative trend can be found throughout the country, in some regions the process of commercial desertification - that is, the disappearance of neighborhood shops - is more advanced. In particular, the worst ratio between new business registrations and closures is found in the Marche region (1 to 4): for this region, the risk of zero openings is brought forward to 2031. Following in the negative ranking are Sicily (one new opening every 3.8 closures), Lazio (1 to 3.7), Sardinia (1 to 3.5) and Umbria (1 to 3.2).

The progressive aging of the population is also reflected in the business system: between 2014 and today, over 153 thousand businesses run by under-35s have disappeared in all sectors of activity, of which almost half - 66 thousand - in commerce. However, according to Confesercenti, the greatest difficulties for shops also arise from increasingly asphyxiating credit and a difficult market, both due to the 'slow' recovery of family spending and the increase in competition, with a panorama increasingly dominated by large groups and online giants.