I'm really confused about how both teams approached the week 3 task.

What on earth were they doing spending the first hour trying to come up with designs themselves?

Surely they should have found out about the 3 companies they were pitching to, and worked out that John Lewis had the biggest turnover in this market.

Then they could have toddled off to the nearest branch and asked people in the shop what they would buy, and the shop assistants what people came in asking for that they didn't stock, and just built that?

Then the pitch is easy peasy: 'We know your customers will buy this at this price because we asked them ourselves. We reckon you'll sell about 10000 of these because we know how often people come in asking for something like it. Any questions?'

Of course, that would have snatched away our wonderful shoeshine box with strings, and we almost got a cube made out of foam from Phil; I'd have loved to see the pitch for that

to be honest i wonder if they were actually kept in a room and 'told' to brainstorm ideas, i feel a lot more goes on behind the scenes in this show than some viewers realise. I doubt they can just randomly direct the minibus to wherever they want early on in a task like this.

Yes, I know it's contrived - but there wasn't even a suggestion of doing any market research by anyone, candidates, sralan, nobody.

Very odd.