Monthly retail sales from the US Commerce Department

The department’s Census Bureau tracks estimates each month. Retail Dive provides the numbers for key segments, and their year-over-year progress, or decline.  [ December sales up 6.7% as shoppers ditch department stores. ] UPDATED: Jan. 19, 2021 REPORTING BY: Daphne Howland, Caroline Jansen DESIGN BY: Nami Sumida  Editor’s Note: Comparisons for individual segments are updated…

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Merchandise returns totaled $428 billion in 2020; top categories of returns were…

SOURCE:  ChainStore Age By: Marianne Wilson Merchandise returns totaled approximately 10.6% of total U.S. retail sales last year. That’s according to a report released by the National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail, which found that consumers returned an estimated $428 billion in merchandise to retailers in 2020. Roughly 5.9% of the returns were fraudulent, equating…

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Retail Was Remarkably Resilient In 2020, But Has Been Changed Forever

Source: Forbes / Jason Goldberg Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid or comet, dubbed the Chicxulub impactor, struck the earth, causing world-wide climate disruption that resulted in the mass extinction of the majority of plant and animal species on Earth. Covid-19 had a similar impact on retail in 2020. Just as the Chicxulub impactor…

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