The number of newly founded online start-ups and mail order companies has increased tenfold within the last 10 years. The increasing digitization of trade and changed shopping habits are playing into the hands of the industry.
Since the first documented sale of goods on the Internet in August 1994 – a CD by the artist Sting – a lot has changed in online trading. In the second half of the 1990s, the first German mail order companies relied on digital sales presences and in 2000 the commercial register already listed 252 new companies in the mail order and internet retail sector. From 2008 to 2009, the e-commerce world in Germany experienced its next growth spurt: In 2008 it was still in the triple digits with 767 start-ups, the following year cracked the thousand mark and there were 1282 new entries in the commercial register, according to a survey by Databyte GmbH.
In the year before Corona, i.e. 2019, 1,712 e-commerce-related companies reported their start, while in the same year 110 online retailers filed for bankruptcy. The shopping behavior of consumers changed significantly with the pandemic. This also explains the previous high of 2,600 start-ups in 2021 with a falling number of insolvencies from 87 last year. As of July 2022, there are 18,281 registered e-commerce companies in Germany. The corona pandemic had a turbo-charged effect on the internet and mail order business. As the current trend monitor of the German trade association HDE shows, the accelerated online growth continued in 2021. The industry has grown by 19 per cent compared to the previous year to almost 87 billion euros.
In a direct comparison of the federal states, Berlin is the e-commerce capital: 1.19 percent of all commercial companies on the Spree are players in online trading. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania brings up the rear with a 0.35 percent share of economic activity. With 19 percent female e-commerce executives, there is still room for improvement when it comes to the proportion of women.
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