South Korea, mainland China, Great Britain, Indonesia, the USA and the Netherlands had the largest representation of online sales, however, the Czech Republic was right behind them. CBRE experts expect global online sales to grow to an astronomical $ 3.9 trillion by 2025. As a result, an additional 138 million square meters of logistics space will be needed worldwide, of which 27.6 million in Europe.

The share of online shopping in retail sales in the Czech Republic is one of the largest in the world

In South Korea, e-commerce has long been at its highest level - from 16% in 2015, its share increased to 36% last year, while CBRE expects to reach 43% in 2025. Indonesia also underwent an interesting development, in which online sales increased from 2% to 20% and by 2025 may amount to up to 38%. In this comparison, the growing trend of e-commerce in the Czech Republic is slightly slower, but even so, its share in total sales is one of the largest in the world: an increase from 8 to 17% in five years. With this share, the Czech Republic even surpassed countries such as Poland, Brazil, Germany and Canada. According to the development so far, it can be assumed that the share of online purchases in the Czech Republic in 2025 will already be 20%.

What is behind the growing share of e-commerce?

There are several reasons why e-commerce is growing in popularity and can be divided into four main categories. Demography (increasing urbanism and urban densification, together with a higher proportion of people working in services), the use of new technologies (the population has better digital skills, more people have a mobile phone and access to the internet; , Changing payment preferences (more and more people own a credit / debit card and have access to internet banking) and improving infrastructure (improving transport infrastructure while increasing the speed of delivery of ordered goods). All this, combined with the worldwide covidu-19 pandemic, which reduced sales in brick-and-mortar stores, meant an increase in online sales in most countries with a lasting effect in the future.

Central warehouse Sportisimo in Ostrava, visualization

"It can be expected that online stores will continue to grow in countries with an already high share of e-commerce in total sales, while markets with a so far lower share will gradually catch up. It is clear that the visible increase in online shopping and the expansion of e-shops have brought greater demands on the speed and quality of the supply chain, which represents a real challenge and huge potential for the entire logistics market. There is no doubt that logistics real estate will be one of the driving forces of the real estate market in the coming years, ”comments Jan Hřivnacký, head of industrial real estate leasing at CBRE.

The Czech Republic is in the center of attention of players from the field of e-commerce
  
CBRE experts recorded very strong demand from online retailers as early as 2020 and during the first quarter of 2021, when the share of e-commerce companies in the total amount of leased space was 25.9%.

"The largest transactions of this kind include the pre-lease of 70,000 m2 by Sportisimo in Contera Park Ostrava D1, the pre-lease of the Alza online store for 36,000 m2 in GLP Park Prague Chrášťany or the expansion of Tchibo in Panattoni Park Cheb, which leased an additional 28,000 m2 and together with the expansion, it also renegotiated its existing 73,000 m2 of leased space. In total, companies from the e-commerce sector leased more than 280,800 m2 in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, ”concludes Jan Hřivnacký.

GLP - Prague, CZ