Empty shop windows hurt attractiveness of Swiss cities

Published on March 30, 2026

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Swissinfo
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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 ... Full story here Are you the author?

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SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

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