the apprentice exclusivity?

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sorry guys cant find the thread but this week task the beech task they got hammered cos the would not give exclisve rights to one of the buyers? yet last series someone sold ice cream exclusively to one cinema chain and they got fired for it?


can somone explain to me the difference it a bit strange?

The one where they got slated they were acting as a distributor for a company selling (ice cream I believe) and as such it was not their decision to make to offer exclusivity.

In this task they could do whatever deal they wanted as it was their product. Had they accepted exclusivity at boots they would probably have sold more than 100 units and won the task (which incidentally would have made them immune from firing anyway)

what it is, is sir alan says whatever he feels like to justify his choice!


if they had given exclusivity and stil lnot won, he would have panned them for giving exclusivity.


tbh, joy (is that the right name) deserved to get fired for appalling dress sense - you wouldnt want to give a top job to anyone who dressed like that.


and sir alan hasnt picked the right winner in any series yet - unlike donald trump, who seems a good judge to me.

During the ice cream task they were genuinely acting on behalf of someone else and getting them deals. It wasn't their right to offer exclusivity. But this one was their own product and they could offer it if they wished to.

To add to that even if the ice cream was their own product it still wouldn't have made business sense to offer exclusivity (and that's the other thing, I think Lindi actually offered the exclusivity herself rather than the other way around) as it was only a small independent cinema chain whereas Boots is obviously much bigger.

Is completely correct If you are selling for someone else, you can't offer something you're in no position to offer. In real life you could be fired or sued. They were completely different circumstances and Sugar wasn't twisting things to justify anything.

Except there's a problem with where the fiction ends and fact starts. If its like a play, and you can say "yes here is exclusivity" and thats it , you should have given it - just to get more sales and win the task. In the real world you would have to know about your costs , profits, prospects for other sales and negotiate and sign a deal. i can't see how they could do all that. If you are being realistic on task is it realistic to say yes or not? Its easy to see why someone would hesitate unless they were in the mindset that his wasn't real and any decision was only valid till the end of that task and towards the total of their sales ?

A super clever project manager would have anticipated the exclusivity offer, and more or less considered the pros and cons. Everything is for sale, at the right price. If they want exclusivity they need to order in volume at the right price. The door needs to be kept open, it should not be slammed shut, the apprentices were not selling proven life-prolonging elixir of life.

In that sense it was an initiative test - it befalls on the boss to think fast on her feet, not speaking by reflex action on her feet. Opportunity came and went. Not sitting on a high horse. It happens to all of us, how many of us get a second chance?

In real life and on TA you would/should talk about it before making a decision. They have indicated they like something about the product so what do they like and what are they looking for? Remember Laura claims to have brought in £500,000 of business in her first year of working. Well you didn't doing it like that! Did she really not know who Boots are? They've an outlet in just about every town in the UK! Actually its 2513 outlets (not all will stock) plus all over the world. Ok those on the TA would not have all the info (in r/l you'd do your research first), but everyone's heard of Boots unless you were brought up in a cellar. Whatever the details are going to be, they will be ordering in 1000's even if they trial it. Why? Because they have already said they want to work together to develop it and that's real interest with their time and so money. You don't dismiss that out of hand. You at least try and find out what sort of commitment they are thinking of by working out a figure to keep the talk flowing. It also shows you are serious about dealing with them and not just trying to flog some stuff from the back of your van.

Ok, how could the conversation have gone? If it's like a play

Laura: so how many outlets do you see this fitting into?
Boots: Well potentionally all our main stores, so up to 1000
Laura: and in your experience how many could each sell?
Boots: well as they're nothing quite like this, hard to say.
Laura: (thinks : well on average 100 per store per year. Product development time etc)
Laura: Well for say two years, I'd have thought 200,000 units isn't unrealistic. I mean we agree this is fufilling a need that no one else does. And everyone does shop at Boots. How does that figure sound to you? As we are speaking to others, we would need something to show from you today. If we could get that <smile>

It's not rocket science (other cliches are available). Yasmina did it last year. Ok John Lewis didn't like the short time frame, but they weren't put off, and came back with their figures. Like Boots these are buyers for a big retailer, they know what sort of quantities they would consider as realistic. Don't treat them like one off punters in the street, work with them. They expect to negotiate.

Exactly. Recognise a big opportuntity when it arrives. What skills do you think Sugar might be looking for?

Yes but we don't know what the game is and Laura may not either.

I could say yes you can have exclusivity , how many do you want and we will gold plate them all too - but only if I know nothing counts in the real world and the game is make us a simulated offer and we will simulate a response.

Its not even clear where and if price comes in as Lord Sugar doesn't seem to be measuring profit- or at least we didn't see that calculation.

If price and profitability is a factor, that discussion about Boot's order gets very strange quickly. Laura not only needs to know what her bottom costs and profit lines are, but she has to cope with the issue that Boots want to get involved and may just want the name or concept .How much would different quantities cost and what does Boots get for what input? She also has to have an answer to the question does selling a concept win the game if sales count and does it give enough profit if that figure is decisive? I can see teams of accountants and lawyers working on this and no time to negotiate anything like that on the task and I don't see any sign of the alternative - that someone has given the teams some made up overnight cost figures to negotiate from and leave to offer exclusivity.

I just don't see where the exclusivity discussion goes - apart from to an exchange like "yes you can have exclusivity" , "OK we will order 100000 of whatever finally turns up" - which is pretty unrealistic, or to "OK lets start negotiations".

I can see why Laura looks confused, and I still don't think we know what parts, if any ,of those negotiations were for real. In the past, we have had people offered real contracts for what they have designed, wheras, in this case, its not even clear if the boys idea was actually bought in the end at all. Do the apprentice contestants know whether they are playng with real contracts and money or not any more than we do?

To turn the question round, what business instincts took Sugar from £100 to an electronics magnate? He believed in the market for cheap electronics and was proven right. People who invest in the same market now no longer have an advantage.

In recent years Sugar got into property, where he is said to have lost £100 million in the property downturn. Ony £700 million left now.

Sugar owns the ex IBM building in central London, he snapped that up for a fraction of what that real estate is worth. Amscreen was formed after buying two failing companies for very little and turning them around. Spotting opportunities is something he's good at. Having long term vision or tact, no not really. He's a merchant rather than an inventor.

Sorry not to quote in full. We do know what the game is, Laura should know, others in the team did, as this task always comes round every year.

The contracts are not 'real' as there is at this stage no actual products just a prototype. Instead the buyers are judging the product, pitch and negotion skills as if it was for real. If the product existed, that's what they would roughly order. They already have a suggested retail price. It's not up to the buyers to care much what profit the teams (if real) are making, that's their business to sort out. For the purposes of the task and judging the unit costs are assumed to be sensible. The buyers can easily spot something that looks to cost too much for that price point and ask how it can be delivered.

This is an early task, only some parts of the business model are being tested.

Bottom line is that Laura didn't realise that she had a potential big to massive sale here and shut the door on it. Somehow Boots liked it, they were starting to think to reward that impression with a large pretend order. Ok, it's likely that they still didn't like it enough in it's present form to order. But as they are thinking it's got merit, and with us behind it, we will recognise that in order to have it (even if it's just the name). It wasn't the pitch they liked, it was something about the product. That should translate into a fake order to reflect their judgement.

My only hope for Laura would be that the Boots pitch was filmed first or second (I CBA to look back at the show) and at the time, she thought she still had 1 or 2 possible pitches to do - would there be a point in taking exclusivity after 1 pitch? Lord Sugar maybe wouldn't be very happy if it was a story of "you said yes to exclusivity on your first pitch, you are a cow for wasting the time of the other companies that I arranged you to see with my own fair hands and have made me look bad" or something along those lines.

Even if it was shown as the last pitch, who knows what the editors do to timeframes in order to piece the final show together.

BUT - she stuffed it up majorly. I have no business qualifications but just from watching TA I know that you'd follow up that offer in terms of negotiating a large order now to win the damn task that I am doing so my ass doesn't get fired. DUH LAURA!!!!

Boots have more women shoppers than men, and on the beach more women than men would read? Boots could add this extra dimension of reading to encourage women to spend time on the beach, thereby simultaneously promoting sales of their already extensive range of suncare products. The new horse would fit into their stable, it would not be sold in isolation in Boots as it may in another chain elsewhere.

It was shown as the last pitch they did. Laura (& others) may have thought the two previous ones went well, if so she's rubbish at reading body language or listening.

Yeah, no way to know if the pitches are shown in the right order. I think they are, as you see pitchers get better or modify what they say. Or in some cases products get a bit broken (the death-box died, Rest In Skip)

They clearly had some idea where it might sell. As it all folds up into something tiny, they might have thought goes with sunglasses. That could even extend into the many optician branches they have. Or packaging it as part of a deal, buy 3 bottle of sun cream get this Book Fing For Fwee*. In which case no further development needed, as most free stuff is rubbish. Place big order now.

* TM Monkseal http://monkseal.wordpress.com/2010/1...e-6-episode-2/ Just been reading it

Um, he didn't fire Laura for refusing exclusivity. He fired someone else entirely, for not contributing. It's some viewers who think Laura should have been fired. So your argument fails in its premise.


Candidates can expect every decision they make to be scrutinised. Lord Sugar will criticise decisions he approves of, in order to put candidates under pressure.


Trump just fires whoever the team nominates as scapegoat. Usually the team leader.

thanks guys it bit more clearer to me now enjoyed reading your thought