Confesercenti data on the closure of neighborhood shops in Piedmont released yesterday outline a situation that does not bode well: in the first three months of this year almost eight hundred retail businesses disappeared, an average of almost nine shops per day, including holidays. And, looking at the situation at a local level, the Cuneo area is also part of this negative trend.
“We don’t have the numbers at provincial level, but we did a census in the Monregalese area and it emerged that in Mondovì alone three historic shops closed at the end of the year“, explains Nadia Dal Bono, provincial director of Confesercenti. And the capital of Granda is no exception. “In Cuneo five or six have closed, sure, one or two have opened, but we are still in the negative”.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, the way of shopping changed because people began to turn more and more to e-commerce, but commerce was not able to follow the change. Just think of the fact that the climate has changed in recent years – it is June but the temperatures are not those of late spring that we were used to – but the sales periods have remained the same, without meeting the needs of buyers.
“The shop conceived as it once was, when there was trade in a fixed location, no longer exists. Mixed mode now works, i.e. both online and at a fixed location”, continues Dal Bono. According to the director of Confesercenti, a modernization of the way in which sales and purchases are conceived would be necessary. To give a boost to the sector we should start from the vacant premises in the Granda province. “There are many in Cuneo, Mondovì, Boves, but also in smaller cities like Roccavione and in all the surrounding valleys. Empty shops should be renovated and reinvented, perhaps used as temporary shops or something else”.
There are numerous reasons that have led to this situation. Firstly, the change in buyers’ habits, but also a lower cost for sellers who open a business online. Added to this are other variables, such as the price of rent which continues to rise and becomes unsustainable for many businesses, taxes, bills and excessively high contribution payments, not to mention the cost of employees. “We have a sum of considerable expenses, which become difficult to bear, especially if we open a new business”.
However, the problem has not developed in recent times. For years, in the valleys of our area, grocery stores, bakers, tobacconists, and in general all small shops have been closing and, consequently, people are moving away due to lack of services. “This bleeding started from the mountainous areas. If the problem had been tackled immediately starting from the small mountain shops, leaving those villages populated, the problem would not have reached areas such as Cuneo and Mondovì. The risk is that this chain reaction will not stop here, but will continue to the big cities if nothing is done to change the situation”.
To reverse the trend, the intervention of the Municipalities and the Region would be necessary. According to Nadia Dal Bono, “an agreement is needed between Municipalities, Regions and owners of the walls where the first two intervene to keep rents low and, at the same time, charge fewer expenses. It is not possible that the price of rent in Cuneo comes close to that of cities like Milan”. To this must be added a change of mentality, which intervenes by rethinking another type of trade and a different valorisation of the cities and valleys, filling empty premises, creating jobs and making the cities of Granda more attractive.
