"The margins are so small, and if you've got margins that are that small you're going to get guys who win once here and there, " Woods said.
No other carmaker, including the import brands, can afford to do so because the profit margins on small cars are so narrow.
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It's even tougher for big-ticket retailers to squeeze margins on small quantities of goods to serve the whimsical needs of each neighborhood.
As a result, profit margins of small firms are thin and cashflow problems are acute even by South Korean standards, a trend that has continued since the 1960s.
Oftentimes, the upfront capital expenditure can be so huge and the margins are small enough (and shrink over time as the component is rapidly commoditized) that the companies who would build these factories cannot raise sufficient investment capital to cover the costs.
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Amazon has fulfillment down to a science and actually does make up for small margins with lots of volume.
When these sides meet again on the season's penultimate day, such small margins could make the difference between the Conference and the Football League.
"I think any extra regulation will increase costs for everyone and stop innovation on the part of companies already operating on small margins, " said Edward Roche, an analyst at the Concours Group, a Cambridge, Mass.
From our experience in Jet Auditing, the fully burdened margins are usually very small.
Furniture stores have higher margins and convenience stores have very small ones but no matter what the industry a drop in margin has an impact on the bottom.
The margins between these results are quite small - handfuls of MPs wavering from one column to another could make all the difference to the way the outcome is perceived.
The impact of increased revenue is itself small due to low operating margins of this segment.
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Most started small and paid rates with gross margins of 50% or more.
In an industry showing significant economies of scale, those hit hardest will be small, entrepreneurial firms turning thinner margins.
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But GM warned that it expects fourth-quarter operating profit to come in well below the level of the first three quarters of the year because it is pulling back on production of trucks and making more small cars, which have narrower margins.
Amandio Micolino, a small-time rancher, is reforesting river margins as required by law.
But tax cuts benefit mainly large companies, which tend to pay higher wages, not the small, family-owned firms with thinner margins.
In Mr Meier's 1995 Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, a long, icy cathedralesque sepulchre at the margins of the local red-light district, the small collection seems lost against the architect's bone-white walls.
Motorola avoided smartphones, seeing them as a small business even if one with higher than traditional margins.
Motorola ( MOT - news - people ) avoided smartphones, seeing them as a small business even if one with higher than traditional margins.
"When you're a small pizza operator trying to get by on tight margins, regulations like this really affect your bottom line, hurting your ability to grow and hire, " Domino's Pizza franchisee Jonathan Sharp of Abilene, Texas, said last summer.
So if your business is anything like the vast majority of small businesses out there, this requirement simply won't apply to you -- because I don't think it's fair to impose a penalty on small businesses that are already operating at very narrow margins.
The brothers' movies are typically set in small Belgian towns and their characters are on the economic margins, but the films focus on the ambition of their principals.
Many small operators are under-capitalised and exist on tiny margins.
We are also positive on FB near-term as our checks suggest ad spend growth on social media is robust, albeit off of a small base, and though expense growth in 2013 may pressure margins, we believe FB remains largely a revenue story.
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Mercedes and BMW have enjoyed the best margins in the business, but they have lost lots of money on their small cars.
So small effects yes, but we can really only see them at the margins.
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