I do not have an exact statistic to confirm the precise number, but experience and reports support the general idea. Which, however, is not exclusive to e-commerce but to any startup in the broad sense.
Why failing is normal
New companies and new business functions on new channels are expressly designed by capitalism to fail. For the same reason evolution works by sacrificing most new attempts at creating new species, which are basically just DNA errors without any superpower. Same thing here.
I am perfectly aware that the prevailing narrative says the opposite and you will find a plethora of gurus pushing you to start a business, especially with e-commerce. But it remains a colossal folly for the deluded.
The hidden costs of e-commerce
There is yet another burden: there are a great many costs. People are dazzled by Shopify's low subscription and ready-made templates. For super simple shops that is fine, but in other cases you already start with significant expenses for a decent site.
Then you have: cost of goods. Warehousing. Transaction fees. Customer service. Shipping. Returns. Complaints. Taxes.
The superstar cost: marketing
And obviously missing from the equation is the superstar that bulldozes almost everything: digital marketing expenses and management.
Doing it alone is simply insane. It is like trying to be an entrepreneur while planning a space mission: you need to focus on your business, not take on another extremely difficult job like marketing.
So you already need to pay someone to handle it. And pray they are good, otherwise you will destroy your advertising budget, which today has reached astronomical figures.
And choosing the wrong collaborator is the norm: most people doing this work are complete incompetents. I say this putting my money where my mouth is, since I have an incredibly hard time finding collaborators for my own agency.
The final truth
Of course you can make it. If thriving online businesses did not exist, I would have no digital clients. But how much work is behind them? How much investment? What organization? What experience? What obsession do they have to avoid being sucked into the black hole of costs?
There are no free lunches. And generally, at this point in history, you only survive if you are at the top of the pyramid.
