More deliveries, fewer stores. Storefronts continue to move from the street to the web: in the first three months of 2024, almost ten thousand retail businesses disappeared for an average of more than four fewer stores every hour. A collapse matched by the unstoppable growth of online shopping: according to Confesercenti estimates, they will rise by +13% during 2024, generating more than 734 million shipments to customers, averaging nearly 84 thousand parcel deliveries per hour. Also according to the professional confederation, the disappearance of businesses from the territory has led the Italian tax authorities to lose more than 5.2 billion euros in taxes since 2014. In detail, in the first three months of 2024 the retail sector recorded the disappearance of 9,828 businesses, about 1,000 more than in the same period last year. Weighed down by closures - 17,243 between January and March - but above all by the slowdown in the openings. Indeed, new business openings continue to decline, and in the first quarter of this year there were only 7,415: ten years ago there were more than twice as many.
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