As online shopping expands at breakneck speed, falling sales are forcing bricks and mortar Swiss retailers to close their doors, particularly in town centres. To bring deserted shop windows back to life, locals and municipalities are taking action. In January, Guillaume “Toto” Morand announced the closure of his funeral home in Geneva after 28 years in business. A month later, his children’s shoe store Neverland in Lausanne began liquidating its stock. From ten shops across Switzerland, the business now operates just eight. “Like many clothing and fashion shops, we’ve reached a situation where sales are falling sharply because of online retail, and we can no longer pay our wages,” the Vaud-based entrepreneur told the Basik programme on Monday. The causes cited for the proliferation of empty shop windows are varied: the boom in e-commerce, rising rents and bills, weak purchasing power, parking problems, the impact of the strong franc, cross-border shopping, security concerns and ...
