Retail store closures and online growth: what the 2026 numbers say

Retail store closures were a running headline through 2025, and online sales kept growing through the first half of 2026. Both are true, but the story is less dramatic than "stores are dying." Closures are slowing, most shopping still happens in stores, and online sales are growing about twice as fast as retail overall. Here is what the data says, where it comes from, and what it means if you are thinking about owning an online store.

Online sales: the Census Bureau numbers

The best public source for US online sales is the Census Bureau's quarterly retail e-commerce report. Its most recent release, published August 18, 2026, covers the second quarter of 2026. Seasonally adjusted, it estimates:

• E-commerce sales: $340.2 billion for the quarter.
• Growth from a year earlier: 12.2 percent, against 6.7 percent for total retail sales.
• Growth from the previous quarter: 3.8 percent, against 2.9 percent for total retail.
• Share of all retail sales: 17.1 percent, up from 16.3 percent a year earlier.

Those figures are preliminary and the Census Bureau revises them. The next release, covering the third quarter, is scheduled for November 19, 2026. You can read the full report on the Census Bureau's e-commerce page.

Two things stand out. First, online growth sped up over the past year. In the second quarter of 2025, e-commerce was growing 5.0 percent year over year. By the second quarter of 2026 that had reached 12.2 percent. Second, online sales are still a minority of retail. About 83 cents of every retail dollar is spent somewhere other than online.

The Census figures cover businesses with paid employees and are not adjusted for price changes. Part of any growth figure is inflation, which affects online and in-store sales alike.

Retail store closures: what Coresight tracks

Coresight Research runs one of the most widely quoted trackers of US store openings and closures. Most of its detail is in paid reports, so here is only what is public.

For 2025, news coverage of Coresight's data in December 2025 reported that store closures rose about 12 percent from 2024, while openings fell about 11 percent. Rite Aid closed nearly 1,300 locations, the most of any retailer. Joann, Party City and Forever 21 went out of business. Big Lots, Claire's, Walgreens, 7-Eleven, CVS and Dollar General were also among the retailers closing the most stores.

2026 looks different. Coresight titled its August 2026 midyear review "Declining Closures Stabilize the Market and Drive Growth," and its public summary puts the full-year projection at about 7,900 closures and 5,500 openings. That is still more stores closing than opening, but the trend has turned toward stability.

So the honest version of the headline is this: physical retail went through a hard year in 2025, it is steadier in 2026, and it is not disappearing.

Why stores close while online sales grow

Store closures and online growth are related, but one doesn't simply cause the other. Look at who closed the most stores in 2025: drugstore chains, discount chains, craft and party retailers, mall apparel. Several were in bankruptcy, carried heavy debt, or had too many stores close together. Online competition was one pressure among several.

What online selling changes is the cost of reaching a customer. A physical store reaches the people who can drive to it. An online store reaches anyone the carrier delivers to, and doesn't pay rent on the space where the customer browses. For a specialty product, the kind of thing most towns don't have a shop for, that difference is large.

That is part of why niche categories suit online selling. A hunter in a small town might not have a store nearby that carries the exact gear they want. A pet owner might want a specific food that the local supermarket doesn't stock. Someone looking for a particular supplement might find a better range online than on a pharmacy shelf.

What this means if you want to own a store

Market data is useful for one question: is this a sensible place to be building a business? On that question the numbers are encouraging. Online sales are a growing share of a very large market, and they are growing faster than retail overall.

Market data says nothing about how any single store will do. That depends on the products you sell, who supplies and ships them, how you price, and how well you bring in visitors. A rising market helps a well-run store. It doesn't rescue a badly run one.

It also helps to be clear about what kind of store you are considering:

• A store with a sales history can be judged on its records. Read our guide to valuing a website and use the due diligence checklist before you pay for one.
• A new, ready-to-launch store has no sales history. It is priced as a build, not as an income stream, and anyone who shows you projected revenue for an untested store is guessing.

We sell the second kind. Each store is built in a niche, sold to one buyer, and launched on a domain that buyer chooses. We don't attach income figures to them, because there aren't any yet.

Which niches benefit from the shift online

The Census report doesn't break online sales down by niche, so we won't claim one is growing faster than another. What we can say is why certain kinds of products tend to suit online selling:

• Repeat purchases. Pet food, treats and supplements are bought again and again, which gives a store a chance to earn a returning customer.
• Specialist ranges. Outdoor, hunting and fishing gear comes in more variety than a general store can stock.
• Research-led buying. Health and wellness shoppers often compare ingredients and reviews before they buy, which happens online anyway.

Those are the three areas we build stores in: pet supply, hunting, fishing and camping, and health and wellness.

How to keep reading the numbers yourself

Headlines about store closures and online booms tend to pick the most dramatic figure available. If you want the real picture, go to the sources:

1. Census Bureau quarterly e-commerce report. Free and released about seven weeks after each quarter ends. Look at the seasonally adjusted share of total sales and the year-over-year change.
2. Census Bureau monthly retail trade report. Gives total retail sales and the "nonstore retailers" category every month.
3. Coresight Research store tracker. Weekly counts of announced closures and openings. Headline figures are often quoted in the press, and detail is in paid reports.

When you see a statistic, check three things: who published it, what period it covers, and whether it is adjusted for seasons. A holiday quarter that isn't seasonally adjusted will always look like a boom.

What the numbers don't tell you

National figures are averages over millions of businesses. They don't show how crowded a particular niche is, how much it costs to win a customer there, or how many small online stores open and close quietly each year without appearing in any tracker. Store closure counts also mix very different stories: a chain trimming weak locations is not the same as a retailer going out of business.

Use the data to judge the direction of the market. Use your own research, on the niche, the supplier and the competition, to judge a specific store.

The short version

Retail store closures were high in 2025 and are easing in 2026. Online sales are growing faster than retail as a whole and account for about one dollar in six. That makes owning an online store a reasonable thing to consider. Whether a particular store is a good buy is a separate question, and the answer is in the store's own details, not the market's.

If you want to talk through which kind of store fits you, tell us what you're looking for.