Did he run out of umbrellas? How many sales (of umbrellas or anything else) would he lose by going early to get new stock compared to how many umbrellas would he sell from his new stock? Could Natasha have sold umbrellas or dogs? could she have had another pitch? We just don't see or are told enough, and we see no figures. We just do know that Jim wasn't selling anything at all while he was off getting them, and it took too long to sell anything when he got back.

We also don't know how well they read the market or if anyone (but Susan) targetted the sale with the biggest mark ups.

We also have a task where Melody and Susan went off and found their own goods, and Helen and Melody looked for a better business plan because they thought market trading was too small fry . We also had suppliers who were closed when in theory they were supposed to be doing their reinvesting. it all looks a bit of a mess where a task became far more complex than Lord Sugar or the task designers allowed for.

May be we do not know all the rules. I thought I heard Jim saying "I would rather try and fail than get fined by Lord Sugar" I was too tired and I may have misheard him. Does anyone remember what he said?

He does say that or something very similar. I agree it makes no sense as his Lordship had told them himself that stock and money would both be counted. So what fines is Jim talking about?

Thanks for the reply. I thought I was imagining things .

It has always been the case that some of the rules that make the tasks harder for the candidates are not explained explicitly for the viewers, e.g. the no internet rule.

In this task, Melody seemed very keen to reinvest as soon as they had enough cash even though it meant that at some point during the task no member of her team was selling! The same goes for Jim ... although it was very late in the day (Natasha's fault) and it was clear that staying where he was, he would have more chance generating profit selling the little stock he already had, he still insisted in turning his cash into stock knowing that he had very little time to sell the new stock. All this makes me suspect that we are not being told all the rules.

LOL!

Did you not notice that Jim carried on selling until he was out of goods and then went to replenish stock?

Did you, further, not notice that it took him exactly as long to get the goods and return to his pitch as the amount of selling time he had left?

Had he restocked earlier he would simply have moved the hiatus in his selling from just before six to some time in the afternoon.

And Shepherd's Bush Market is much busier mid afternoon than wherever he ended up after restocking so his sales would probably have been reduced and they could easily have lost the task.

Sugar completely cocked up the design of the task if he wanted emphasis on restocking. He should have given them a much smaller initial stock and found a way to reduce the loss of selling time involved in restocking.

Or had the task last a longer time, if say this task had been over a whole week then the restocking issue would have been more critical, with only two days then you could do what they did and restock just once without running out.

blimey - how many people on this thread don't have a grip on the fact that the task wasn't about 'profit' but total assets Natasha was blatently in the wrong and I'm glad that for once a team didn;t get praised for being marginally less rubbish than the other team

Except that it wasn't.

The team that made the most profit won! (That's what people - including Sugar - don't seem to have grasped.)

He told them that it was about one thing but the task design and scoring made it about something else. Naturally, the teams concentrated on maximising the number that would get them the win.

Then, when Sugar realised that the task hadn't accomplished what he wanted it to accomplish, instead of taking responsibility for his own mistakes, the went into a mega-strop and ranted at the candidates for doing just what you'd expect them to do.

The selling of goods above the warehouse price is what would increase total assets, if we assume that the goods will be priced as at warehouse price for the stock take.

So buying more stock with cash will have no effect on the performance. However, it will decrease the time to sell which can help increase assets.

You've missed the subtlety, the task was indeed about total assets, i.e. purchase price of stock + cash, however that isn't the same as saleable value of stock + cash, and the way to "amplify" the value of the stock is to sell it, and then you have the largest total assets. Buying stock takes time, time that somebody could have been selling. It would be perfectly reasonable to get to the wholesaler early in the morning (hence why they open so early, and shut early, as Helen found out) and get the stock for the day, which is the credible strategy Natasha followed.

The whole task smacked of the Only Fools and Horses episode "Healthy Competition" right down to the dogs and Rodney reinvesting in more lawnmower engines from Alfie Flowers. All it needed was for Tom to be chased by a pack of real dogs and a policeman.

I think the reinvestment bit was dreamt up to try and give the task more credibility from a real business perspective, otherwise it was just Del Boy style barrow/suitcase boying. Unfortunately the logic was as screwed up as superhero pantsman and his unfortunate habit of wearing his pants outside his trousers to show kids the error of following his example. It would take more skill to get just the right amount of stock for the second day from a careful analysis of what happened on the first, but then that would have made it much like the beauty task.

Only if you believe the spin on the show and the arguments offered by Lord Sugar. But they make no logical sense in this case.

Sugar wanted some people out. He heard the figure that they had only reinvested £20 and thought that was all. He assumed they ought to have bought and sold more for no reason at all.He's then got the wrong team winning for what he thinks are the wrong reasons , so he over-reacts. He fined them for not doing something that was a fine judgement, and might have reduced their sales if they had done it. Essentially, he thought the task was about something its design didn't support and he failed to realise that winning the task required a different strategy that just maximised the day two bottom line, not one for starting a long term business.

It's also not clear if he was actually hearing Natasha when she said she had reinvested on the previous day.

It looked as if the red mist had descended and he'd stopped receiving data in his rush to issue some self righteous condemnation.

The responses of the apprentice candidates were interesting too. Very few of them followed the Sugar instructons after a short time trying them out. Natasha tried to maximise sales, and her only flaw was not selling much herself. Helen didn't think it was worth spending hours selling a few items for a small mark up, when you could make more on some big retail deal. He said it was impossible - but she had actually done it before closing suppliers killed the deal. Its not clear if that means she's too corporate for him and lacks trading blood, as he thinks , or that she's moved beyond the street trader stage and thinks bigger. Melody decided not to follow the sales , but to follow her idea what would be a good item regardless . Her electronics idea wasn't actually a bad choice. Susan went for a wealthier market to try and make more money with her sheets and then ditched his suppliers entirely and went for something with the highest mark up she knew would sell . She didn't do anything he had laid out to do, but she may have done best in the task and might have in the real world.

Jim and Tom seemed to get the idea of his task, but Jim seems to have been following rules no one else understood with his talk about fines. Tom just sold and followed the Sugar script - but its not clear that his ideas would have brought in more money than Melodys - or Helens, if Helens had worked out.

Quite. He'd have the same amount of time available for selling, and he'd have more profitable lines to sell. Can't you see why that would have been a win?


Oh, come on. You think he doesn't know the figures before he goes into the boardroom?

Yeah, I think it qualifies as one of the worst-thought-out tasks ever

Except that he didn't, as far as we saw, run out of umbrellas which were what he seemed to be selling at a very good profit. He carried on selling them until he ran out.

Had he restocked earlier he would have lost selling time when the market is at its busiest and replaced it at a time when it's dead.

And yet that's what Sugar wanted him to do. That's why Sugar cocked it up. He didn't realise that the whole balance of the task was wrong for what he wanted to induce the candidates to do.




"Oh come on" is not a part of any logical argument.


We can only go on what is presented to us. That is what is presented. He didn't seem to be aware of the previous days restocking and just kept talking over Natasha when she tried to point it out.

Either he was suffering from the red mist or he was giving a very good impression of suffering from it.

the only way the task makes any sense is if the reinvested stock they bought with the profits was counted at the retail price , ie if jims umbrellas were bought for 1 pound and sold for 5 pound if he had bought 100 of them in the middle of the second day it would not have mattered if he had sold them they would still have been worth 500 pounds.

if this is the way it was supposed to be counted this is why LAs got so cross that very little reinvestment took place

I think if that had been the way it was scored they would have been desperate to restock right up to the end.

When introducing the task, LS stated that it was the wholesale value that would be counted.

You can exhaust the potential sales in a particular area. Regular visitors to that area, who have not bought the product, may not want it. You cannot assume the same volume of sales every day in an area.

If you have limited personnel available all of whom are selling, it may be wise to wait until the selling time is over and then restock ready for the 3rd(hypothetical) day.

I'm thinking here of the 2 phone calls he made on the second day where he asks for permission to restock. I think he did run out of umbrellas by the first call. We don't see him selling umbrellas in between. The reason Natasha gives for refusing him permission is not time, but "we'll be carrying too much stock", which is a non-issue with the task rules. It looks to me like he has no umbrellas, but does have all the electronic tat that Natasha spent a fortune on, and she wants him to sell that. So he tries.

In the second conversation, he mentions selling another £50, but he's unhappy with it because he knows with better products he could have sold more (as he had been doing earlier). This is where he points out they'll get fined and ridiculed for not restocking, so finally Natasha relents and lets him go.

But it's too late. Jim was right. They not only get fined and ridiculed, they lose their treat. It must have been so frustrating for him to suffer for her ill-judgement, when he was telling her the right answer.


I wrote that because I had thought you knew as well as anyone how staged the boardroom is. Lord Sugar needs to know what went on before he asks, in order to ask the right questions. Especially with the winning team, as this session before the results are announced are the only chance he gets to grill them. So he knows the figures before he goes in. The figures make it clear Natasha reinvested £303, not £20.


He was angry with Natasha because she'd been stupid. Making the round trip for £20 was stupid. It's clear she's trying to avoid ending up with unsold stock. Her defending that choice was stupid.

Up to the point of the first call he'd sold £175. At the time of the second call he says he's sold another £50. Which given that that call took place late in the afternoon when the market is footfall is dying is pretty good going.

Had he gone earlier he would simply have shifted his selling time from peak to well off peak.


There's absolutely no doubt that Natasha has the wrong end of the stick. However, that was not what stopped them doing what Sugar wanted which was to keep restocking. All that did was vary what was left at the end which was, in reality, an irrelevance as the task was finished.


That's pure supposition of something that is necessary to make your case. The figures don't support that.


Again, pure supposition. He says nothing about selling anything else and the figures don't really support your argument.


Yet again, pure supposition. I could believe it either way. Certainly the on the occasion mega sale where he announced; "We're back in business" he must be quite an actor to fake that level of surprise.


You stating it dogmatically does not make it so.


So, there really was no need for him to throw the wobbler.



We didn't hear her tell Jim to only spend £20. She just told him to go. Maybe he spent that because he knew he would only have a few minutes in a dead market and was unlikely to sell much so it was simply pointless to buy more.

Whatever, it made no difference whatsoever to the result of the task.

as jim was and helan did

No, I meant that all the members of both teams would have made it an absolute priority to do so.

And Jim would have spent all available funds if that had been the case, not just £20.

I could be wrong but I thought Jim could only get hold of 20 umbrellas

and if we are all confused over the rules , I think all of them were

It is just that this way round explains why LAS was so cross and JIm was so desperate to restock

It's a very interesting point.

From memory, almost everyone here assumed that they would get the wholesale price.

But you are quite right that if the got the retail price it would have changed the whole nature of the task.

Could it be that it was so badly explained that not only did 5 of the six candidates get the wrong end of the stick but also the majority of people on DS?