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Definitions
Accounts Receivable Balances
- Retail accounts receivable are amounts owed to retail stores by their
customers for purchases made on credit. The estimate in this publication
refer to receivables outstanding as of December 31, including
receivables against which the firm has borrowed. However, credit paper
discounted or sold to others and amounts actually written off as bad
debts are excluded. Also excluded are amounts charged on credit cards
issued by oil companies, banks, and other organizations that issue
credit cards. Charge accounts are credit accounts for which full payment
is scheduled to be made at the end of the customary billing period.
Installment accounts are classified as open-end or closed-end.
o
Open-end installment accounts are primarily revolving or optional
accounts. A deferred payment privilege is extended through a line of
credit, and the customer has the option of paying the balance in full or
paying in two or more installments. The payments are subject to a
minimum required payment with a finance charge usually assessed.
o
Closed-end installment accounts are those generally requiring a new
contract to cover each extension of credit. A precomputed finance charge
is assessed at the time credit is extended. Specified fixed schedules of
installment payments are established with the number, the amount of
payments, and the due dates specified in the contract.
Adjustment Factors
- The X-12 ARIMA program was used to derive the factors for adjusting
estimates for seasonal variations and, in the case of sales, for
trading-day and holiday differences. Non-adjusted sales and inventory
estimates for January 1992 through February or March 20081 (if an
advance sales estimate was computed) were input to this program.
Seasonal adjustment of estimates is an approximation based on current
and past experiences. Therefore, the adjustment could become less
precise because of changes in economic conditions and other elements
that introduce significant changes in seasonal, trading-day, or holiday
patterns.
Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey
- The Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services provides early
estimates of monthly sales for companies in the retail trade and food
services sectors. The United States Code, Title 13, authorizes this
survey and provides for voluntary responses. This survey covers retail
companies with one or more establishments that sell merchandise and
related services to final consumers. These firms provide data on dollar
value of retail sales for selected establishments.
Annual Retail Trade Survey
- A mandatory annual survey which collects sales, inventory, purchases,
accounts receivable, and expenses data from firms primarily engaged in
retail trade and accommodation and food services.
ARTS
- See 'Annual Retail Trade Survey'.
Auxiliary Facilities
- Also known as enterprise support units of a reporting company, these
are primarily engaged in furnishing supporting services to the company's
operating units, such as warehouses, central administrative offices,
garages, and repair services.
Calendar Month Reporter
- A firm that closes their books on the last day of each month, or on
the same date each month (e.g., the 28th).
Capitalized Expenses
- Also known as capital expenditures, this includes all expenditures
during the year for both new and used structures and equipment
chargeable to asset accounts for which depreciation or amortization
accounts are ordinarily maintained. Also included are capitalized
leasehold improvements and capitalized interest charges on loans used to
finance capital projects.
Confidentiality
- Title 13 of the United States Code authorizes the Census Bureau to
conduct censuses and surveys. Section 9 of the same Title requires that
any information collected from the public under the authority of Title
13 be maintained as confidential. Section 214 of Title 13 and Sections
3559 and 3571 of Title 18 of the United States Code provide for the
imposition of penalties of up to 5 years in prison and/or up to $250,000
in fines for wrongful disclosure of confidential census information. In
accordance with Title 13, no estimates are published that would disclose
the operations of an individual firm.
The Census Bureau's Internal Disclosure Review board sets the
confidentiality rules for all data releases. A checklist approach is
used to ensure that all potential risks to the confidentiality of the
data are considered and addressed.
Cost of Goods Sold
- Beginning inventory plus purchases of goods for resale minus ending
inventory.
Data Month
- The month for which data are being requested.
Disclosure Limitation
- A disclosure of data occurs when an individual can use published
statistical information to identify either an individual or firm that
has provided information under a pledge of confidentiality. Disclosure
limitation is the process used to protect the confidentiality of the
survey data provided by an individual or firm. Using disclosure
limitation procedures, the Census Bureau modifies or removes the
characteristics that put confidential information at risk for
disclosure. Although it may appear that a table shows information about
a specific individual or business, the Census Bureau has taken steps to
disguise or suppress the original data, while making sure the results
are still useful. The techniques used by the Census Bureau to protect
confidentiality in tabulations vary, depending on the type of data.
Dollar Values
- All dollar values presented are expressed in current dollars; that is,
the estimates are not adjusted to a constant dollar series.
Consequently, when comparing estimates to prior years, users also should
consider price level changes.
Drop Ship
- When a manufacturer drops a shipment off at a customer's site,
although a retailer makes the sale.
E-Commerce
- The sale of goods and services where the buyer places an order, or the
price and terms of the sale are negotiated over an Electronic Data
Interchange, the Internet, or any other online system (extranet, e-mail,
instant messaging). Payment may or may not be made online.
EDI
- See 'Electronic Data Interchange'
EIN
- See 'Employer Identification Number'.
Electronic Data Interchange
- The exchange of documents in standardized electronic form between
parties in an automated manner directly from one party's computer system
to an application in another.
Employer Identification Number
- A nine-digit number used by the Internal Revenue Service for any legal
entity that is required to file a federal tax return.
Establishment
- A single physical location where business is conducted, or where
services are performed.
Expenses
- See 'Total operating expenses'.
Firm
- A business organization or entity consisting of one or more domestic
establishment locations under common ownership or control.
GAFO
- GAFO represents sales at stores that sell merchandise normally sold in
department stores. GAFO includes the following kinds of retail
businesses:
o
General merchandise stores (NAICS 452).
o
Clothing and clothing accessories stores (NAICS 448).
o
Furniture and home furnishings stores (NAICS 442).
o
Electronics and appliance stores (NAICS 443).
o
Sporting goods, hobby, book, and music stores (NAICS 451).
o
Office supplies, stationery, and gift stores (NAICS 4532).
Gross Margin
- The measure of gross margin represents total sales less cost of goods
sold.
Imputation
- The procedure for determining a value for a specific data item where
the response is missing or unusable.
Interest Expense
- Interest expense incurred in the financing of operations and long
lived assets used in continuing operations, and excludes transfers made
within the company and capitalized interest. For kinds of business
covered in this survey, interest is not considered a type of
operating expense.
Inventories
- Merchandise inventories are the value of stocks of goods held for
sale. The inventories estimates represent the value, at cost, of the
merchandise available for sale as of the last day of the report period.
Methods of valuation may vary according to the accounting practices of
each firm. The estimates provided in this report are valued on a
non-LIFO (last in, first out) basis. Note — LIFO is a method of valuing
inventory where the latest items of merchandise added to the inventory
are the first ones taken out. Non-LIFO would mean that another method,
such as FIFO (first in, first out), was used to establish the value of
the inventory available for sale. Merchandise inventories are shown for
stores and warehouses servicing retail establishments. Included are only
those warehouses that maintained supplies of merchandise primarily
intended for distribution within the organization.
Inventories / Sales Ratios
- The inventories / sales ratios show the relationship of the
end-of-month values of inventory to the monthly sales. These ratios can
be looked at as indications of the number of months of inventory that
are on hand in relation to the sales for a month. For example, a ratio
of 2.5 would indicate that the retail stores have enough merchandise on
hand to cover two and a half months of sales.
KB
- See 'Kind of Business'.
Kind of Business
- The principal kind of business being conducted at an establishment.
Leased Department
- Leased departments are broadly defined as operations of one company
conducted within the establishment of another company. Typical examples
may include jewelry counters or optical centers within department
stores.
MARTS
- See 'Advance Monthly Retail Trade Survey'
Monthly Retail Trade Survey
- The Monthly Retail Trade Survey provides current estimates of sales at
retail and food services stores and inventories held by retail stores.
The United States Code, Title 13, authorizes this survey and provides
for voluntary responses. This survey covers retail companies with one or
more establishments that sell merchandise and related services to final
consumers. Retail firms provide data on dollar value of retail sales and
sales for selected establishments; some firms also provide data on value
of end-of-month inventories.
MRTS
- See 'Monthly Retail Trade Survey'.
Multi-unit Firms
- Firms with two or more establishments.
Nonsampling Error
- The nonsampling error of an estimate based on a sample survey
encompasses all factors other than sampling error that contribute to the
total error of the estimate. This error may also be present in censuses
and may be attributed to many sources: inability to obtain information
on all units in the sample; response errors; differences in the
interpretation of the questions; mistakes in coding or keying the data
obtained; and other errors of collection, response, coverage, and
processing. Although no direct measurement of the potential biases due
to nonsampling error was obtained, precautionary steps were taken in all
phases of the collection, processing, and tabulation of the data in an
effort to minimize their influence. The Census Bureau recommends that
individuals using retail estimates incorporate this information into
their analyses, as nonsampling error could affect the conclusions drawn
from the estimates.
Previous Month
- The month that precedes the data month.
Privacy Act
- A 1974 Federal Act that protects the privacy of personal information
that the government has on file. The act places restrictions on the
collection, use, maintenance, and release of information about
individuals.
Purchases
- Total cost of all merchandise purchased for resale to customers net of
returns, allowances, and trade and cash discounts.
Retailer
- Businesses that sell goods in small quantities directly to consumers.
Reporting Unit
- Subsidiaries, divisions or other operating units of the EIN or company
sampling unit separately identified on the database for purposes of
collecting data from each individual part. If all data for a sampling
unit are obtained from one location, the sampling and reporting unit
records are equivalent.
Sales
- Sales include merchandise sold (for cash or credit at retail or
wholesale) by establishments primarily engaged in retail trade. Services
that are incidental to the sale of merchandise, and excise taxes that
are paid by the manufacturer or wholesaler and passed along to the
retailer are also included. Sales are net, after deductions, of refunds
and allowances for merchandise returned by customers. Sales exclude
sales taxes collected directly from customers and paid directly to a
local, state, or federal tax agency.
The estimates of sales measure the operations receipts rendered by
stores that primarily sell at retail. The sales estimates represent
total sales and receipts of all establishments primarily engaged in
retail trade. They do not include sales at retail by manufacturers,
wholesalers, service establishments, and others whose primary activity
is other than retail trade. Because the retail establishment is the
basic unit of measure, the published estimates of sales by type of
retail store are not intended to measure the total sales for a given
commodity or merchandise line.
Sales Tax
- A tax collected by retailers and certain service providers when they
make taxable retail sales. Sales taxes could include state, county and
local taxes. Sales taxes exclude excise taxes and occupancy taxes for
accommodation industry.
Sample
- All firms selected for a specific survey.
Sampling Error
- The sampling error of an estimate based on a sample survey is the
difference between the estimate and the result that would be obtained
from a complete census conducted under the same survey conditions. This
error occurs because characteristics differ among sampling units in the
population and only a subset of the population is measured in a sample
survey. The particular sample used in this survey is one of a large
number of samples of the same size that could have been selected using
the same design. Because each unit in the sampling frame had a known
probability of being selected into the sample, it was possible to
estimate the sampling variability of the survey estimates. The Census
Bureau recommends that individuals using retail estimates incorporate
this information into their analyses, as sampling error could affect the
conclusions drawn from the estimates.
Title 13
- Title 13 is the legal authority for the Census Bureau's programs. The
Census Bureau's authority is founded on the United States Constitution
and Title 13. The data collected by the Census Bureau, the leading
source of quality data about the nation's economy and people, provide
for the foundation on which our democratic system of government is
based. To fulfill its mission, the Census Bureau must collect quality
data and distribute it in a way that preserves usefulness while
protecting privacy and confidentiality.
Title 26
- Title 26 Internal Revenue Code provides for the conditions under which
the Internal Revenue Service may disclose Federal Tax Returns and Return
Information (FTI) to other agencies. Specifically, 26, U.S.C. 6103 (j)
(1) provides for the disclosure of FTI to the Census Bureau for
statistical purposes in the structuring of censuses and national
economic accounts, as well as for conducting related statistical
activities authorized by law.
Total Error Statement
- The total error of an estimate based on a sample survey is the
difference between the estimate and the true population value that it
estimates. The true population value is usually unknown.
Total Operating Expenses
- The sum of detailed types of expenses. It excludes cost of goods sold;
income, sales, and excise taxes; capital expenditures; funds invested;
and interest expense. The detailed expenses are listed below:
o
All Other Operating Expenses
- Operating expenses not reported elsewhere, such as bank card charges,
motor fuel, and travel expense. Excluded are purchase of products for
resale (cost of goods sold); bad debt; transfers made within the
company; capitalized expenses; interest; impairment; income, sales, and
excise taxes; and other non-operating expenses.
o
Annual Payroll
- The gross earnings of all employees paid during the calendar year
(cash basis). It includes all forms of compensation, such as salaries,
wages, commissions, dismissal pay, bonuses, vacation and sick leave pay,
and compensation in kind, prior to such deductions as employees' social
security contributions, withholding taxes, group insurance, union dues,
and savings bonds. The total includes salaries of officers of
corporations; it excludes payments to proprietors or partners of
unincorporated concerns. The Census definition of payroll is identical
to that recommended to all Federal statistical agencies by the U.S.
Office of Management and Budget, in particular, the definition used on
the Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return, Treasury Form 941. This
definition does not include employers' social security contributions or
other nonpayroll labor costs, such as employees' pension plans, group
insurance premiums, and workers' compensation. Data presented on annual
payroll are sample-based and include payroll of enterprise support
locations, such as retail warehouses and central administrative offices,
and thus may not match payroll data compiled in the 2007 Economic
Census.
o
Commissions
- Commissions paid to other firms or independent contractors, including
payments by wholesalers to other firms for commissioned sale of
merchandise. This item excludes commissions paid to the firm's own
employees (included in payroll) and commissions paid by wholesale agents
and brokers.
o
Contract Temporary Staff and Leased Employee Expense
- Payments to other firms for the contractual use of their employees.
These employees are supplied by other firms to perform specific jobs,
and include temporary help and leased employees. Day-to-day supervision
is provided by the purchasing firm. For example, contractual costs for
security and janitorial personnel are excluded if supervised by the
supplying firms, but are included in data compiled on other operating
expenses.
o
Data Processing and Other Purchased Computer Services
- Computer facilities management services, computer input preparation,
data storage, computer time rental, optical scanning services, and other
computer-related advice and services, including training
o
Depreciation and Amortization Charges
- Depreciation charged against tangible assets owned and used by a firm,
tangible assets and improvements owned by a firm within leaseholds, and
tangible assets obtained through capital lease agreements. This item
also includes amortization charges against intangible assets (i.e.,
goodwill, patents, copyrights, etc.). Excluded from this item is
accumulated depreciation.
o
Employer's Cost for Fringe Benefits
- Expenditures made by the employer for legally required and voluntary
fringe benefit programs for employees. Legally required fringe benefits
includes all programs required under Federal and State legislation such
as FICA, unemployment tax, workers' compensation, and state disability
payments. Voluntary fringe benefits includes programs not specifically
required by Federal or State legislation, such as life and health
insurance premiums for employees; costs incurred under defined
contribution plans such as profit sharing; and costs incurred for both
qualified and unqualified defined pension plans.
o
Expensed Purchases of Software
- Purchases of prepackaged, custom coded, or vendor customized software
including software developed or customized by others, web design
services and purchases, licensing agreements, upgrades of software; and
maintenance fees related to software upgrades and alterations.
o
Expensed Equipment
- Expensed computer hardware and other equipment (e.g., copiers, fax
machines, telephones, shop and lab equipment, CPU's, and monitors).
Excluded are expenditures for capitalized equipment; for software
expenses; for leased and rented equipment; and depreciation for
capitalized equipment.
o
Governmental Taxes and License Fees
- Payments to governmental agencies for taxes and licenses, business and
property taxes and excludes income taxes, and sales and excise taxes
collected from customers.
o
Lease and Rental Payments for Land, Buildings, Structures, Store Space
and Offices
- Payments made to other companies for the rental or leasing of land,
buildings, offices and related structures and includes penalties
incurred for broken leases.
o
Lease and Rental Payments for Machinery, Equipment, and Other Tangible
Items
- Payments made to other companies for the rental or leasing of
machinery and equipment. Costs for the rental and leasing of computer
software are excluded.
o
Purchased Advertising and Promotional Services
- Cost of purchases of advertising, marketing and public relations
services.
o
Purchased Communication Services
- Cost of purchased telephone, cellular, and fax services;
computer-related communications (e.g., Internet, connectivity, online);
and other wired and wireless communication services.
o
Purchased Electricity
- Cost of electricity paid directly to the utility company and excludes
the cost of electricity within lease or rental payments.
o
Purchased Fuels (Except Motor Fuels)
- Cost of fuels for heating, power, or generation of electricity. It
does not include fuel for motor vehicles. It excludes the cost of fuel
within lease or rental payments.
o
Purchased Packaging and Containers
- Purchases of containers, wrapping, packing and selling supplies used
in packaging, processing, shipping, and selling of goods.
o
Purchased Professional and Technical Services
- Management consulting, accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, legal,
actuarial, payroll processing, architectural, engineering, and other
professional services. This excludes salaries paid to a firm's own
employees for these services.
o
Purchased Repairs and Maintenance to Buildings, Structures, and Offices
- Noncapitalized repairs of and maintenance to buildings, structures,
storefronts, and offices. Extensive repairs or reconstruction that were
capitalized are considered capital expenditures and are, therefore,
excluded from this item. Costs for repair and maintenance provided by an
owner as part of a rental contract or incurred directly by an
establishment in using its own work force are also excluded.
o
Purchased Repairs and Maintenance to Machinery and Equipment
- Cost of all non-capitalized repairs and maintenance to machinery and
equipment.
o
Purchased Transportation, Shipping, and Warehousing Services
- Cost of purchased postage, shipping or delivery services, or
warehousing storage. Also included is the cost of purchased
transportation services.
o
Purchases of Other Materials, Parts, and Supplies (Not for Resale)
- Cost of other supplies, materials and parts purchased for a firm's own
use. This item excludes computer supplies (and packaging supplies
purchased by wholesalers and retailers), and the cost of goods purchased
for resale.
o
Water, Sewer, Refuse Removal and Other Utility Payments
- Cost of purchased services for water, sewage, trash, and utilities not
included elsewhere. It excludes costs covered within lease and rental
payments.
Trade Area
- The broad band of business groupings - retail trade, wholesale trade,
and service industries.
Unpublished Estimates
- Additional statistics, such as dollar volume estimates for some kinds
of business not separately shown in this report, are produced as a
by-product of the regularly published statistics. These additional
estimates have not been included in this publication because of high
sampling variability, poor response, or other factors that may make them
potentially misleading. It should be noted that some unpublished
estimates can be derived directly from this report by subtracting
published estimates from their respective totals. However, the estimates
obtained by such subtraction would be subject to the poor response rates
or high sampling variability described previously for unpublished kinds
of business.
Individuals who use estimates in this report to create new estimates
should cite the Census Bureau as the source of only the original
estimates.
Weight - The weight indicates the approximate number of firms in the survey's universe represented by the selected firm. For example, an EIN selected with a weight of 21.000 represents itself and 20 similar businesses (in terms of KB and size) in the survey's universe.
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1992-2014 Fashion Industry Statistics Reports