Tom Douglas Quotes

Any business owner can tell you that if their company isn't performing profitably and up to standards, one of two things will happen: either you make changes to improve its efficiency, or a competitor will drive you out of business. Market forces have a way of cutting to the chase rather quickly.

I don't fret much about the natural life spans of shoe companies. If stores don't do the right things, they cease to exist, and that doesn't trouble me at all.

Competition is always good.

Competition has always been good.

The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.

Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

Starting my own business was kind of a wakeup call in a number of different ways. I had to meet a payroll every week, and we had to satisfy customers, and we had competitors that we had to compete with in order to have those customers come into our stores, and we had to compete with other employers for our employees.

If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.

When you compete with Wal-Mart, even if you think you've found a niche don't ever become complacent.

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.

Competition's a good thing.

The state of the economy is not the issue when it comes to growing a business. The relevant questions are always: 'What business are you in? Furthermore, is it adapting to the times?'

There's competition everywhere.

Retail businesses have narrow margins. If you cut off a flow of young consumers, it's only a matter of time before the businesses struggle and fail.

The reality of life is, if you have a bagel shop and everybody is pouring into the doughnut shop across the street, if you want to stay in business, you start selling doughnuts.

The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

One of the things I've probably absorbed when I was in business school - and didn't know I was learning it - was about life cycles, that things begin, and they peak, and then they decline. So whether you look at life cycles of fashion, or you look at life cycles of things that people buy, designs, everything is in a life cycle. Getting out of the apparel businesses and into beauty and lingerie, those were very big bets, but they were very deliberately thought about and tested over time.

Many first-time founders fail to understand the difference between the potential of the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the very finite subsection they can hope to capture. No company ever captures the entire market they pioneer. Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and others will jump in from the moment you've identified the potential.

When you have more competition, you have better products and lower prices.

The more I learn about industry structures, the more I feel that once a company has paid the fee, in a manner of speaking, to enter a sector, it becomes even harder to stay afloat.

It is hard to win in Asia.

More regulation is not the best answer to every problem.

The free market, the people, will find solutions and they always did in the past.

Competition is a powerful and essential part of this nation's economy and vital to cutting government costs.