Local commerce declares war on large platforms: "Some kind of control is needed"

BarcelonaCatalan local commerce stands up to large digital sales platforms like Amazon, Shein or Glovo, which they accuse of "unfair competition" and of being one of the reasons for the stagnation of its growth. "These new agents operate with different rules of the game [...] and concentrate enormous economies of scale that directly impact the competitiveness of our local commerce: a kind of control is needed," Pimec Comerç president Mònica Gregori demanded this Monday, during a media briefing in Barcelona.

The entrepreneur's statements come within the framework of the second summit of commerce in Catalonia, an annual meeting to advocate for local businesses and the need to make commerce a public policy. According to data collected by the Catalan employers' association, local commerce has experienced discreet sales growth between 2019 and 2026, specifically 6.3%, driven largely by inflation (and not by a real increase in income). At the same time, the organization observes that, during the same period, shop rents have increased by an average of 38%, energy costs by 45% and digital services by 62%. Costs related to social security and "staff hiring" have also increased.

Given the rise in costs and the emergence of new digital competitors, Pimec demands the development of a national commerce pact between the three "vertebrating" agents of the sector – public administration, consumers and establishments – to have a roadmap that allows facing the "profound" transformation that local commerce is undergoing. "It is about agreeing on positions, putting figures to them and analyzing them jointly to then have budgets allocated to all this execution," Gregori remarked.

In parallel with the national trade pact, the Catalan employers' association has detailed that it is already preparing a study to quantify all the "hidden costs" that large e-commerce platforms avoid paying to operate in cities like Barcelona. "It cannot be that they pay taxes abroad, that they do not pay garbage taxes when our streets are full of packaging [...] or that they have delivery drivers in situations that are not entirely transparent. [...] We need to establish regulations aimed at platforms that ensure we all start from the same starting line," insisted the president of Pimec Comerç.

In this regard, the businesswoman, also linked to the artisan bakery sector, believes that the solution to face the competition from groups like Amazon, Temu, or Shein may involve imposing some kind of tax and more exhaustively controlling the labor costs of these companies. Be that as it may, Gregori also made it clear that the employers' association will have a clearer position once the sector analysis report has been prepared.

Generational handover

The sector's other major demand at Monday's conference was related to the lack of generational succession. Through a presentation by the president of the Pimec Observatory of Catalonia and Professor at UPF-BSM, Oriol Amat, the employers' association has quantified the magnitude of the problem. In the country, more than half of the people leading family businesses (54%) are over sixty years old. At the same time, only three out of every ten shops have planned for succession, the academic pointed out, who also noted that the lack of generational replacement is one of the main reasons that lead a local business to close.

From Pimec, therefore, they have also called for – within the framework of the future national trade pact – public-private collaborations to be established to either guarantee generational succession or to ensure that the commercial activity of a traditional business is maintained.