Most in five years stores collapsed
16:04
A decisive shift toward e-commerce has caused the popularity of stationary shopping to decline. In 2022, most stores went bankrupt since 2017, as Rzeczpospolita daily wrote.
Since the beginning of the year, the retail market has shrunk by more than 3,000 locations, to 373,000, according to data collected by Dun & Bradstreet Poland, an interviewer for Rzeczpospolita. This is a reversal of the trend of the last years when the number of stores disappeared. Additionally, only in the first half of the year, over 4,500 stationary stores suspended their activity.
"If such a high trend continues in the next six months, then at the end of 2022, we can expect a record-high number of bankruptcies in recent years, exceeding 5,000 liquidations," Tomasz Starzyk, spokesman for Dun & Bradstreet Poland, said.
General grocery stores are the fastest to disappear from the market – 644 were liquidated, 532 non-specialized stores and 487 clothing stores also disappeared. On the opposite pole were household appliances stores, which increased by 54, and 16 outlets with medical products. These are the only industries out of nearly 30 in retail to see an increase in the number of stores.
