Who closes and who holds on

MiRT Radar no. 2

Between 2012 and 2025, in the 122 cities analysed by Confcommercio, about 156,000 retail and street-vending points of sale disappeared. That is over a quarter of the total.

A quarter of the stores gone

The figure is the difference between the stores that existed in 2012 and those that exist today. Over the same period only accommodation and food service grew, by about 19,000 businesses.

Two clarifications, so the numbers are read for what they are. The study covers 107 provincial capitals and 15 populous non-capital towns, and Milan is not among the cities analysed. And it does not say every store is bound to close: it says the balance is negative, and that within that balance there are stores that hold.

What is changing

A customer can buy almost anything from home. What they cannot take home is the person who advises them, the fitting, the repair, the place to stop and stay.

So the useful question is not “how many stores are closing” but “what do the ones that remain sell”. We look at two categories, one Italian and one American. They share one thing: they sell a service and a place, not only a product.

Pharmacies: a protected core and a growing service

Italy has 20,295 pharmacies, one for every 2,904 inhabitants, against a European average of one for every 3,213. In 2025 total turnover was €27.865 billion, 4% more than in 2024 (Federfarma, “La farmacia italiana 2026”).

It must be said at once that a pharmacy is not a store like the others. Prescription medicines are 57.1% of turnover, and the number of pharmacies is regulated by law. Part of their resilience comes from there, not from service.

Another part depends on how pharmacies work. In 2025 they delivered 1,162,182 telemedicine services, and electrocardiograms grew by 26.17% (Federfarma, 2025). Monitoring blood pressure or taking an ECG are services that require being there, in person.

The lesson for a specialist store is not “do what the pharmacy does”. It is that, inside a business that sells products, the service is the part the internet cannot copy.

Independent bookstores: the American example

In the United States there are 3,417 independent bookstores, over 500 more in a year (Fortune, 28 May 2026). It is an American figure and does not transfer to Italy.

The case Fortune tells is Kelley Hartnett’s, owner of Double Dog in Missouri. She started with a store on wheels and now wants a bigger space where customers can stay without having to buy. For her the store is “maybe 50% books and 50% community”.

The book is also sold by the internet. The second half is not.

What this means for your store

A specialist store almost always has its “community” half: customers who come back for advice, a fitting, a repair, an evening event. Often nobody measures it and nobody writes it down anywhere.

Three questions to ask yourself this week:

1. Which service do you already offer, for free, and tell nobody about?
2. Is it written on your Google profile and your website, or does only whoever walks in know?
3. Could a customer get it from the internet? If the answer is no, that is where your advantage lies.

The answer to the first question is usually the first point to start from.

Sources: Confcommercio, Ufficio Studi, “Città e demografia d’impresa”, presented 12 March 2026; Federfarma, “La farmacia italiana 2026”; Federfarma, telemedicine in pharmacies, 2025 data; Fortune, 28 May 2026.