they made ~150% profit on their ~£200 expenditure, which to me is much more impressive than only ~60% profit on £500 expenditure that the girls managed to achieve

The girls won fair and square.

Totally agree with you. Although much was made of Dan's leadership style it was his (mostly but not only) failure in selling that cost him his place. It was going very well until the split team and try and sell outside the market part of the task (I think it may have been in the rules). That was a total mess and cost them.

To lose by £15 is just bad luck. They should have trounced it if they had targeted their 2nd market correctly. Ok no repeat business, and business reputation shat on (Yasmina are you listening?!) but by the rules they would have won.

Nope.

Yes more impressive but it's the numbers that count.

This series looks like it's gonna be a good one, stuffed with characters who think they have a role to play. Let's watch them unravel in the editing

Profit margin is relative to the product, the girls went for a bigger risk and got the bigger return

It doesn't make sense for a business programme to work out the numbers like that, for the difference of £15 the boys turned (roughly because i cant quite remember) £250 into £300 profit
and the girls turned £500 into £315 profit.

It doesn't take a genius to see who is better at turnng every pound into more money.

Everyone has to pay their debts in business.

From a pure business sense the guys were much better. However according to the rules of the task, the girls won.

Whilst the boys should have won if they had sold better, even by a tiny amount, there is a justice in the girls winning.

Whilst the boys had the better return on investment by far, they would not have got much repeat business if this had gone on for long in real life. The low quality would mean lowering the retail price and so profit falls. You can only go on for so long selling over priced junk. Also virtually no chance of selling to trade without a massive price drop, which they wouldn't be able to go down to.

The girls' lower ROI doesn't really count (except to some investors) as the gross profit is the same. Same size teams, same wages bill, same equipment costs, etc. In time they could make a higher profit margin by sourcing better and changing the recipes. If they can convert a chef to buy (cos he wanted to be on tv maybe?) they should have little trouble building trade sales.

Typically for The Apprentice, these handmade products are sold for ridiculously high prices. As a guide, Waitrose sell six organic bangers (400g) for £2.39. Their dearest are just over £3. Faced with customers who have some idea of prices, both teams should have made a loss. Although the girls are in a better position to lower their costs, though not in a one day task without losing. In real life, yes.

Neither team seem to work out their costs until they had committed themselves and were half way through production. That's probably down to the tight shedule. So there is an element of luck there. The girls were better organised and put two on the task, just as well as theirs was the riskier strategy.

It really came down to selling. Both lots were too pricy, but at least the girls' were more likely to convert a taste into a sale (once they got their act together). The boys struggled to find enough mugs at the market, and then their act fell apart by having no idea who might buy these things and so half of them almost stopped selling. It's the tortoise and the hare. The hare should win but doesn't if it stops concentrating on what it's supposed to be doing.

You make it sound like it should be about business, not a game show for vacuous and vain eejits... who we then get to spend our Thursdays pulling apart, Savile Row thread by Savile Row thread...

I would agree that the girls had the better stratagy - with sausages the supermarkets will always be able to undercut any small newcomer trying to compete on price, so a quality, unusual product is the only way long term a sossie business will survive.
The girls were lucky though as they only realised late on that the profit margin was so narrow - they had used too much mix per sausage and couldn't go back to remake them as a more saleable size.
If they had made just £16 less they would have been bawled out for that, and not frying up samples from the start.

for a quick one day one time investment ROI is somewhat moot, its the final number that matters most I would have thought.

I don't think you can take the girls win away from them, the objective was to come back with a bigger profit than the other team and that is what they did, they took a risk with their gourmet sausages the boys took a risk by trying to sell sausages door to door!

Percentages are all well and good, but the men chose to go cheap and cheerful. Putting aside the fact that this is a show, it's the level of profit which keeps the size of the business alive, in this case, it's like 'paying' for eight people, plus costs. The girls have a stronger balance sheet after the first task, they took a greater risk with the higher spend, and it paid off.

Remember what LS said "I need someone who's got the courage to take a risk". On that basis the right team most definitely won.

Yeah, it could have so easily gone the other way. For a one day very basic task theirs was by far the riskier (not sure they knew it). They succeeded by only making fairly minor mistakes by comparison. If they had worked out costs first they wouldn't have made the more serious one. But time was deliberately short. There's an echo of last year's soap task here, except they were paying closer attention. That both teams made a healthy profit and the winning margin was 5%, there's a good chance it would have come down to personalities rather than any fatal flaws.

Quite true, but higher start up costs might mean you can't start at all. Or start late and miss the best selling period, if we are talking seasonal food here or events like Christmas.

I'm not taking their win away, just saying due to the rigid rules of the task, the boys should have done better. A little more thought and less panic and they probably would have done.
Not saying they were robbed, they definately weren't.

Agree with BB too btw, just I wouldn't say cheerful, I'd say sad.

The door to door was a desperate silly waste of time rather than a risk. Would you buy from someone who just rang your doorbell annoying you, if you had no idea who they are, and they having no idea what sort of customer you are eg it's a waste of time trying to sell pork to Muslims (Paul S3 take a bow). If they had thought about their product and targetted it better they should have made more sales and so won.

You could almost argue the lads were selling veggy sausages, so low was the meat content, lol!

Agreed, they took a risk & won. The Tasks are not about, who has the biggest profit margin, but who makes the most money.

There's been some on this show that would have tried that if they thought they could get a sale. Stuart, and possibly Melissa, might be contenders for this year's Let's Rip the Punter Off and Run Away Award*.

*the cup has been recovered from Jenny C's house btw

That's where it starts entering real business territory, truth is that's what annoys me about this show, the 'profits' made never really reflect the great business minds they claim to be, making £315 profit with the combined manpower of 8 people seems rather pitiful to me.

The rubbish they come out with, and their job titles are all trumped up. If they were half as successful as they claim to be they wouldnt be in the apprentice.

Since every contestants have a short intro about how good they are, and this happens in every series. I am pretty sure, that the, production team, guide/push/help them in writing these 'jumped up/huge ego' intros. There is no way these people would come with crap like this in a real interview.

I would love it if one person came on, and said "yeah I am alright, not brilliant...but with a bit of help I can get the job done. I am not the finished article, and have had a pretty average career so far". However I guess the production team wouldnt allow this and would turn it into the crap we hear these people saying.

Well big deals aren't set up in a day between total strangers. You got to check that one of you isn't undercover

The show has a budget somewhat less than the US one. But business basics apply all over. It's not quite as funny if a huge corporation takes a year, and dozens of people to make a basic mistake. Well not funny if you work for them.
Hello banking, hello car industry, hello Alan Sugar

On my invisible calculator (hehe), you take £300 profit every day for 6 days over 50 weeks, and you've £90k profit per annum
Would you really need eight people? Say four, paid at £12k, plus rent, bills, and it's very roughly doable and you've work for four people. In practice you'd save costs were possible, and up profit by selling to more varied outlets. In the real world you'd do a lot more planning, but they had no sleep and only 17 hours.

There's no business like show business

I can just imagine anyone who bought some watching the show and feeling physically ill after they've seen what exactly it is that they ate