.png)
Act before the market
Most of us can name the biggest online retailers—but what about the thousands of smaller webshops that make up the real fabric of e-commerce? In Denmark alone, a country of just under six million people, there are over 30,000 webshops actively selling products online. And if we include service-based and other categories, the number climbs beyond 40,000.
That prompted us to ask: how many of these webshops are actually surviving?
By comparing webshop and company data from August 2024 to February 2025, Tembi identified over 3,300 webshops that had ceased activity. That represents 11% of the total market - a significant churn, even if mostly made up of small to medium-sized players.
In the last 6 months in Denmark:
This does not signal an 11% drop in e-commerce overall, but it does indicate high volatility - particularly among smaller players.
Looking at category distribution, Clothes and Shoes make up 13.2% of all Danish webshops, followed by Furniture at 10.2%.
When we analysed closures, the category that took the biggest hit was also Clothes & Shoes, with 530 webshops closed - accounting for 16% of all closures. Beauty & Personal Care and Furniture followed, with around 170 closures each.
This aligns with overall category size: more webshops in a category generally mean more closures. But fashion clearly over-indexes in both size and risk.
Fashion e-commerce is fiercely competitive. Dominated by global players and shaped by constantly shifting consumer preferences, it also faces the operational challenge of seasonal inventory cycles.
To stand out, local brands need a differentiated marketing approach. But with advertising costs rising sharply, that’s easier said than done. It’s not uncommon for B2C fashion stores to increase their spend by 20% just to maintain business-as-usual - often still being outbid by global giants. This forces a tough choice: either reach fewer customers or spend at unsustainable levels.
Add to this the so-called Temu effect. Chinese dropshipping marketplaces like Temu use aggressive, loss-leading strategies to offer ultra-low prices. Danish webshops can’t compete without sacrificing quality or profitability. Even environmentally conscious shoppers can be swayed by endless product options at rock-bottom prices.
Each of these pressures is significant on its own. Together, they create a perfect storm of market conditions that are difficult for local fashion players to survive.
While furniture hasn’t been hit by dropshipping platforms in the same way, it faces a different challenge: logistics.
Shipping large, heavy items is expensive. Rising freight costs in 2024 made margins even tighter. Add in the complexities of delivery windows, assembly services, and returns, and it becomes tough for smaller players to compete with established brands that can absorb those costs or optimise operations at scale.
While we can't say shipping prices are solely to blame for rising closure rates in this category, they are a critical factor impacting profitability.
With over 50% of Danish consumers buying clothing online, and nearly 40% purchasing shoes, these categories are massively popular—and saturated.
Not every webshop can survive in such a crowded, price-sensitive market. Despite relative economic stability, consumer confidence in Denmark remains cautious. Reports from BCG and Nordea show low discretionary spending, which hits fashion and beauty especially hard.
An 11% closure rate may sound alarming, but it’s not entirely surprising. Tools like Shopify and WooCommerce have made it incredibly easy to launch a webshop - sometimes in less than a day. But low barriers to entry also mean low resilience. The easier it is to start, the easier it is to fail.
While a few large retailers have gone under, our data suggests that the majority of closures come from small and medium-sized businesses.
Still, it’s not all bad news. Over the same period, 2,645 new webshops were successfully launched. So while the market is churning, it’s also replenishing.
E-commerce is dynamic, and understanding it requires continuous tracking. At Tembi, we monitor 600,000+ webshops across Europe, updating our database bi-weekly. This enables us to:
Because in a market that never stands still, real-time intelligence is your competitive edge.
