Lombardy is the Italian capital for e-commerce

In the vibrant atmosphere of Milan, while you wait for the green light and try to cope with the traffic, surely in the last two years you could notice a change in the population of vehicles: not only cars and taxis, but vans, Deliveroo, Foodora, just eat it, Amazon Prime. The growth of parcels traffic due to ecommerce and the success of food delivery platforms is visible.

The growth of innovation in distribution and signs of a concentration of players in Lombardy was already clear in 2014, when a research conducted by Camera di Commercio di Milano highlighted that 2,459 enterprises, 20% of the Italian players in ecommerce, were based in Lombardy. Milan was home of 1,116 businesses, second only to Rome.

For 2016 data are showing an increase and now in Lombardy there are 2943 ecommerce companies out of 16,000, the region is the first one in Italy for ecommerce, followed  by Lazio with 1,840*.

Milan and Lombardy are already recognized and growing in awareness as the e-commerce core for Italy for a number of reason. The city has always been home for management consulting companies, advertising agencies (today transformed in digital communication service providers and consultants) and specialized services offering marketing solutions addressed to fast moving companies.

No wonder that Alibaba headquartered, in 2016, in Lombardy choosing Milan for its first European office: this choice brought the ecommerce giant right in the middle of the most important ITC cluster in Italy and also in the best place to test innovative solutions and stay in touch with the innovation-oriented business community.

From Milan is easy to network with the best digital services providers and follow a significant trend. The percentage of Italian companies active in online sales adding marketplaces to the institutional online store grew in 2015 from 33% to 41%*.

Amazon confirmed the perception of Lombardy as the ecommerce district, locating the main logistic plants in Porto di Mare (south of Milan) and Origgio (between Milan and Varese). The same did Zalando as discussed in our previous article “Logistic makes Lombardy more attractive for foreign investors”.

Also Institutions like Netcomm (the first and only Consortium of Electronic Commerce in Italy) and Osservatorio ecommerce of Politecnico di Milano (Observers Digital Innovation) operate from Milan, where also the most comprehensive report about ecommerce in Italy is published and the leading exhibition about this industry (E-commerce Forum) is held every year.

 *Source: http://www.citynetgroup.com/articolo/79/Ecommerce_in_Italia:_dati_di_fatturato_e_trend_2016