Online trade continues to grow significantly in Germany

In Germany, even after the reopening of many stores in the spring, online retail continues to grow significantly faster than stationary retail. From May to September of this year, Internet retailers increased their sales by 8.8 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office. In the same range, sales in retail sales stagnated with a slight minus of 0.2 percent. So stores have barely benefited from the reopening after the month-long lockdown. Compared to the pre-crisis year, brick-and-mortar retailers achieved an increase in sales of 2.9 percent in 2021, but remained significantly behind online retail, which recorded an increase of 36 percent. This continued a trend that has been clearly visible since 2015. The corona crisis accelerated development in 2020 and 2021. In 2020 as a whole, sales in online retail were 23.8 percent higher than in 2019. From 2015 to 2019, sales growth in this industry was even more moderate with an average rate of 9.5 percent per year. In comparison, the retailers in sales rooms recorded lower increases in sales even before the corona pandemic: the average growth rate from 2015 to 2019 was only 1.9 percent; In 2020, sales increased by 1.2 percent compared to 2019. "The Internet and mail order business is a permanent winner of the Corona crisis," the statistics office concludes. Online users regularly achieve the strongest increase compared to the previous month in November, when the discount campaigns on "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" heat up pre-Christmas business.