Retail Wholesale & Distribution

The wholesale and retail sector includes the wholesaling of food and household goods; agricultural inputs; machinery, and intermediate inputs to industry. It includes all aspects of the retail trade except motor vehicles. It excludes the repair of personal and household goods. The transport and distribution sector includes all road, water, rail and air transport activities; freight and cargo movement and storage; transport of substances via pipelines.

For information about the Retail, Wholesale, or Distribution Sectors in the Angus Area contact ECDEV@angus.gov.uk

Useful Information and Links

Scottish retail sales were worth £21 billion in 2006. 12% of enterprises in Scotland are retailers, with 14,450 VAT registered retail businesses operating out of 25,770 outlets. There are 239,421 people employed within retail in Scotland, equating to 1 in 10 of the workforce.

Retailing makes up 6.9% of Scotland's Gross Value Added (GVA), compared with 5% in the UK. GVA is made of up of employee costs, taxes less subsidies on production and gross operating surplus. Compensation of employees forms the largest contribution to total GVA, but the proportion varies across industries, from 90 per cent for the education, health and social work sector, to 32 per cent for the energy & water sector. In contrast, the proportion of GVA made up by gross operating surplus varies from 71 per cent for the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector to 10 per cent for the education, health and social work sector. The GVA in the Scottish retail sector has risen by 48% since 1998 to reach £4.8 billion, compared with a rise of 41% in the UK as a whole. Retail accounts for 20% of turnover and 14% of GVA in Scottish service industries as a whole. This compares with 16% for turnover and 13% for GVA for UK retail in UK services as a whole.

Total sales grew by 5.8% in June, up from 4.0% in May. Like-for-like sales grew by 3.5% compared to 1.9% in the previous month, according to the British Retail Consortium. Once again Scotland outperformed the rest of the UK with like-for-like sales stronger than UK growth of 3.0%. Scotland returned to its postion ahead of the UK on total sales growth, as it had done earlier in the year. UK total sales grew by 7.5% in June. The better than usual weather during June, combined with the start of the domestic and international holiday season, had a positive impact on sales. Source: www.retailindustry.about.com

The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC), the trade association representing the retail sector in Scotland, launched it's 3^rd Retail Crime Survey in early January 2005.

Among the key findings of the survey it found that the overall cost of crime to the retail sector increased by 37% between 2002 and 2003, largely because of an increased investment in crime prevention measures by the sector itself. The overall cost now stands at £228 million.

Scottish Business Crime Centre

http://www.sbcc.org.uk
The SBCC was created under the Business Crime Reduction Strategy for Scotland. A partnership between the police, Scottish Executive and Scottish business. The main function of the centre is to provide practical advice to the business/commercial sectors on how to develop business crime reduction and prevention strategies.

Retailers Against Crime in Scotland (RACS)

http://www.sbcc.org.uk
Retailers Against Crime in Scotland (RACS) exists to ensure partnership working to protect Scotland's retail industry from crime.