-60 percent and even peaks of 75 percent. The collapse in sales of household appliances and consumer electronics stores (almost all fearlessly open) is disastrous. Yet almost all of them are open as indeed the Prime Ministerial Decree of March 11 of the Government had allowed to do, recently confirmed by the Prime Ministerial Decree of April 10, as they must guarantee the offline and online availability of telephones, PCs, tablets, large and small appliances ( ironically, 90 per cent of small devices are very low quality Chinese stuff).
"No one thanks them, no one acknowledges that they are doing their "duty" as entrepreneurs and citizens at their own risk - he underlines Davide Rossi general manager of AIRES (which brings together retailers in the sector) - and this despite the fact that the collapse in turnover concerns a sector that has already been in great difficulty for some years and despite the fact that it would be more convenient for many retailers to close. However, customers are thankful, also because not only are they allowed to go out and go shopping in household appliances outlets but also to leave the Municipality of residence if this is the only possibility to find the good they need”.
The AIRES press release guarantees that the sales activities take place in a context that scrupulously complies with all the health provisions issued by the Ministry of Health and the Regions. "We do it - underlines the press release - to be close to the Italians, even in these difficult moments and we intend to continue for our customers, for our businesses, for our workers and their families". However, little margin of financial autonomy remains because, to aggravate the situation, the ever more threatening shadow of the online sales of the giant, Amazon, which in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, forfeits growing margins and market shares by blowing them to “physical” stores and also to their online platforms.
Just to know the size of this huge business, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos has grown his safe net worth, thanks to Covid-19, in the first three months of the year by as much as 24 billion dollars. “Amazon continues to record sensational revenues damaging traditional commerce, exercising a non-transparent competition that is unaware of the logistical and bureaucratic difficulties of operators with physical stores - Rossi denounces - it is urgent that at European level decisions are made and adequate fiscal instruments be applied, forced levies or special VAT formulas ".
The scenario of the 1500 Aires stores translated into numbers reveals another very heavy form of dumping exercised, among other things, by countries with sovereign governments such as the Dutch one, which, on the one hand, refuses any form of support to countries in difficulty such as the 'Italy. And from another it collects enormous surpluses from the "irregular", artificial, parallel trade of enormous quantities of products and in particular those of the electronic and electrotechnical sectors. The proof is revealed by Davide Rossi. “The Italian average annual expenditure on electronic and electrotechnical devices is 250 euros, that of France 320 and that of Germany 500 euros . But what is incredible and seemingly inexplicable is that the average expenditure in the Netherlands is 1.100 EUR" . A market drugged by the fact that the headquarters of the multinationals – located in the Netherlands – can freely place orders without limits to the factories, passing them off as goods for the Dutch market which is notoriously very small. And then sell the goods imported to Holland to their branches. The profits deriving from this irregular trade inflate the balance sheets of the multinational headquarters and of Holland of course, but impoverish those of the countries where the multinationals pay ridiculous amounts of taxes. And the balance sheets of thousands and thousands of resellers.
