In its fiscal 2016 annual report, Do it Best Corp. reported sales of $3.02 billion.
Net income for the year: $671,000.
That is not a typo and it is not a bad year. A company moved three billion dollars of hardware and lumber and kept roughly two hundredths of one percent of it.
The reason is one sentence in the same document, and it inverts everything most people assume about chains:
The Company is obligated to refund to its member-shareholders the gross profit on sales of merchandise to the member-shareholders, less all operating expenses.
Obligated. Not authorized, not intending to. A franchisor takes a royalty from its stores. This company is legally required to hand the margin back to the stores, because the stores own it.