The Greater Cleveland retail market The three million residents of our eight-county "Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area" -- otherwise known as the Cleveland-Akron region -- constitute the nation's fifteenth biggest metropolitan market, with more than $50 billion in annual "effective buying income" and over $30 billion in annual retail purchases. In 1999, we spent over $2 billion on things to wear (clothing, shoes, jewelry)... almost $900 million on furniture and floor coverings... over $350 million on small electronics and computer equipment... nearly $1.7 billion on drug, health and beauty products. But we manufactured almost none of these products. For details, here are two Portable Document Format files from the Plain Dealer. (To open these files you need Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free download here.) 1999 retail sales by merchandise line in the 8-county Cleveland-Akron CMSA -- 100k pdf file Top 20 U.S. metropolitan markets, 1999 (Cleveland/Akron CMSA was 15th in population, 16th in disposable income and retail sales) -- 197k pdf file |