England may be a nation of shopkeepers but it isn't, and may never be, a nation of e-tailers. People have been surprised by the collapse of such high-profile online shops as Boo.com and Clickmango, which crashed last week despite having Joanna Lumley as its figurehead. They should not have been. Half of all new businesses fail within their first four years and the death rate for dot.com companies ought to be even higher. Yet if they had been ordinary small companies they would have withered away unnoticed. Because they are using a new medium to sell their goods they attract attention. Clickmango.com, for instance, was notching up sales of only £2,000 a week. This is corner shop stuff. Lastminute.com managed to push transaction sales up to £1m in the three months to June, on which it made trading losses of over £11m. It is a good job it still has £117m in the bank from its flotation to see it through.

Lastminute is at least doing something original. The problem with other online retailers is that they are merely selling old economy goods in a more expensive way without the brand loyalties their (traditional) competitors enjoy. Building up a brand from scratch can be expensive - and that's before the huge cost of installing a new distribution system. It has been the same sorry story in the US. The American shakeout has left three companies - Amazon.com, eBay the online auction house and Priceline.com - with 90% of the market value of online retailing.

In recent months, e-tailers have had to contend with the downward pressures on prices that the internet generates because of the consumer's ability to move to a cheaper source. In the US, failure in business is regarded as a rite of passage whereas in Britain it still carries a stigma. It is time we learned to be more mature. Judging by the escalating rate of failures, it looks as though we are going to get lots more opportunities.