Looking to track month-to-month changes in retail sales by retail category? Then, take a look at the Retail Owners Institute Web site.

The Retail Owners Institute Web site offers free data (in chart form) on the most recent six month sales by retail category. The data reflect sales trends by month in comparison with the prior year and are based on Bureau of Census retail statistics.

For example, here is the most recent chart for clothing and accessory stores:

As we have noted before, the Retail Owners Institute also provides free benchmarking information for 55 retail segments and six measures of retailing performance: profit, gross margin, turnover, debt-to-worth, the current ratio, and return on assets.

Click the image to access the benchmarking data.