Retail and wholesale data guide

Retail and wholesale spans three SIC divisions that get lumped together and should not be:

• 45 motor trade, including 45111 sale of new cars and 45200 maintenance and repair of vehicles
• 46 wholesale, including 46390 food and beverages and 46900 non-specialised
• 47 retail, including 47110 non-specialised stores with food predominating, 47710 clothing, 47910 mail order and internet, and 47990 other retail not in stores

The motor trade in particular is a different business from retail in every respect except that both sell things.

The mistake everyone makes

The register will not tell you where shops are.

A retail company's registered office is very often its accountant, its head office, or a formation agent. A chain with 200 stores appears as one company at one address. A market trader with no premises appears the same way as a shop on the high street.

So any attempt to map retail presence, measure high street density, or count shops in a town from this data produces something confidently wrong. That is a different dataset, and it involves premises rather than companies.

What it is actually good for

Finding trade buyers. If you sell into retail or hospitality, the register gives you every company in your target codes, filtered by area and by age, including the ones with no website and no online presence at all. That last group is not small.

Catching openings. A newly incorporated retail or wholesale company is buying suppliers, insurance, EPOS and accounting for the first time. Formation is the earliest public signal that a new buyer exists.

Credit screening. Before you extend trade terms, company age, current status and officer history are the cheapest first check available. This sector has meaningful churn and the check is free.

Reading the shift online. 47910, mail order and internet retail, is where a large share of new retail formations actually go. Watching that code against the in-store codes tells you something about where the sector is moving, at a level nobody publishes directly.

What the register does not hold

• Store locations, premises, or footfall
• Turnover, margins or stock
• What the company sells, beyond a self-declared code
• Contact details
• Whether the business is actually trading, as opposed to registered

What people in the sector actually do with it

• Build a stockist or trade buyer list filtered to a territory
• Catch newly formed retailers and wholesalers before competitors reach them
• Check a trade account before granting credit terms
• Track closures in an area, and the gaps they leave
• Size a competitor set in a region by SIC code and formation date

Where to start

The retail and wholesale sector view breaks divisions 45, 46 and 47 down code by code, with formations and dissolutions.

If you need a specific cut, tell us what it is.