Life and death of small businesses by Tamedia

Thousands of independent businesses were threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic. But what do we really know about these businesses that constitute the the heart of our social and economic life? An unprecedented graphic dive into the lives of tens of thousands of companies in Switzerland.

I decided to show how long a business in Switzerland can last before its death. Every business is represented as a dot. Each of these thousands of dots represents an entity and evolve and move, according to the story and the information I want to provide.

I use a machine learning algorithm to classify all these businesses into groups.

It allowed me to show dramatic visual transitions between the businesses groups, the ones with a long life span, and the ones that are quickly disappearing after their creation.