After years of concerns about low retail sales in Orange County, the last two years have seen a big spike – but there’s still a large “retail gap” between what Orange County businesses sell and what Orange County residents buy.

And Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce president Aaron Nelson says that gap is actually growing.

“Orange County’s retail demand (in 2014) was $1.8 billion, (compared to) $0.9 billion in retail sales,” he said last week during his annual State of the Community report.

View the full report here.

What those numbers mean: in 2014, Orange County residents spent a total of $1.8 billion on retail goods – but Orange County businesses only took in about $900 million in retail sales.

That’s a “retail gap” of $866 million – and even though Orange County businesses are seeing more sales, Nelson says that retail gap is getting bigger because Orange County residents are spending more too. In 2012, Orange County’s retail gap was $728 million – and it went up by 19 percent in just two years.

That confirms what we already knew: in spite of the “shop local” mantra, Orange County residents are still leaving the county to buy a lot of their retail goods.

“General merchandising stores are the place where you see the biggest gap,” Nelson says. “Doesn’t surprise you, right? Where do you buy cleats? This is a basketball town – where do you buy a basketball to play basketball with?

“There are (local) options – but we know that we are driving outside of market for some stuff that we could be finding locally. Food and beverage stores, health care, clothing, electronics, furniture, gasoline…we have room to grow on the retail side in all of those areas.”

And while Orange County’s retail gap is growing, every other surrounding county’s gaps are shrinking – or even turning into surpluses, where local businesses sell more than local residents buy. Johnston County had a $60 million retail gap in 2012; by 2014 that had turned into a nearly $200 million surplus. Alamance County already had a $153 million surplus in 2012 – and that number more than doubled in the last two years. Durham County had a $375 million gap in 2012; it’s now a $105 million surplus. Chatham County still has a $134 million gap, but that’s half of what it was in 2012 – and even in 2012, Chatham’s gap was far smaller than Orange’s.

“Our gap grew, so we’re the opposite of the rest of them,” Nelson says. “That’s a challenge – particularly if we’re expecting great government services, (or) if we expect to grow jobs or fund our schools.”

Nelson says those numbers serve as a reminder that – while Orange County has made quite a few strides toward improving local retail – there’s still a long way to go.

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