Trade Association Thursday: Retail

 

I’ve reference the National Retail Federation’s cheery holiday shopping statistics so I thought they would be a good candidate for a report card:

http://www.nrf.com/

Overview:  The National Retail Federation NRF represents an industry with more than 1.6 million U.S. retail companies, more than 25 million employees – about one in five American workers – and 2007 sales of $4.5 trillion.

Associate members?  Yes, annual membership is anywhere from $500-8,000 for commercial entities. “B”

Public membership directory?  No, looks like you need a membership.  “D”

National conference?  Yes, and they provide a detailed conference schedule with helpful biographical information on the speakers.  “B+”

Subchapters?   Yes, NRF also represents over 100 state, national and international retail associations but not easy to find links to those associations on the main website. “C+”

Industry reports or news?   Excellent list of reports and news. “A”

Glossary?  A limited glossary of retail labor terms: “C+”

Provides a sense of the industry?  Excellent, from the detailed information about their annual conferences, news, reports and government relations, there is lots of information that provides a strong sense of the industry.  “A”

Overall:  The website isn’t that easy to navigate, partly because there is so much information and it appears to be a collection of other website with their own navigation but the content makes it worthwhile. “B+”

New Census tool on employment

The U.S. Census Bureau is a great resource for lots of macro-economic information. I have to admit that frequently the information is too macro to be useful to me. For business development purposes, some macro information is helpful but really only if its tied to specifics, like actual companies and that is not the mission of the Census Bureau.

I was interested in this new tool called “Business Dynamics Statistics” but turns out to be another geek-orama that I’m hard pressed to see how I’d use. Give it a try and let me know if can do something cool that I can use.

Business Dynamics Statistics