There were 3 members on each team. They had two days.

Therefore they had 12 half person days per team.

Each team ended up with around £1000.

Subtract the £250 for the initial palate and they made around £800 - let's be generous and say £900.

So that was £75 per person per half day.

So why was the £90 that they would have made on the 30 duvets had the wholesaler not unexpectedly had a half day off such a bad business decision?

You are quite right - if Helen had sorted that deal out in the morning then (with Lord Sid's fine) they would've won. In fact they could have picked up a bit more stock for afternoon selling too.
Of course, with the usual 20/20 hindsight of Lord Sid and his chums, it didn't work out so it was stooopid and St Helen, patron saint of Strict Nannies, got her first boardroom spanking.

Er, are we watching the same programme?

Yes, same program, but maybe a different mindset

I would amend the maths as given that Helen spent one of the half days on the duvet wild goose chase the profit they made was over 11 half person days (the assumption being they would have made an extra £80 if she had stayed put - 8 of those mobile chargers not inconceivable)

And given that she also spent time on the phone finding a wholesalers and diverted Natasha from selling to discuss the problem possibly even more than half a day was lost.

I think it was the wrong decision. And I think Lord Alan was pissed off about the wasted petrol too!

Even if you amend the maths they would still have come out on top.

The main problem was that the wholesaler shut at 14:00. No one could reasonably have foreseen that.

Had that not happened it would have been a much shorter journey so not only would they have got the £90 but Helen would probably have had another two and a half hours selling so they would have won comfortably.

Not if lord sugar hadn't given his pointless fine. They still had stock to sell and with no third day, it would have just lost sales with manpower diverted to picking up more stock.

If the wholesaler hadn't closed it would have been reasonable as the potential profit vs time spent looks quite good. There mistakes on this front came after they realised the wholesaler had closed.

chasing around after that one big order when you could earn almost as much with lots of smaller more immediate sales is the pointless high risk strategy - putting all your eggs in one basket, when there are all sorts of reasons the sale could fall through.
(having done similar stuff I can assure you these sorts of sales do fall through a lot)

Whats even worse is they didn't even think to check ahead of time to see if the guy would be around to make the purchase. They knew they were going to be quite late by that stage - so it's not unreasonable to think that a small buisness might have closed up shop by then -

Wah wah wah Helen lost for the first time and it's just not fair!

LordSirAlan wanted them to win anyway, hence the silly fine he gave Natashayeah's team.

This doesn't make any sense! What are person days?

As for the task, in hindsight it was flawed because a team (such as Natasha's) could win without reinvesting a lot of stock. Whoever came up with the task didn't factor in that scenario. Oops.

It's a standard measure of labour. (It used to be known as 'man-days').

If you have 3 men for 5 days that's 15 man days. As is 1 man for fifteen days or 15 men for one day.

Okay, I follow you.

Not necessarily - Helen would have had to make an extra £40 on top of the duvet deal to win without the fine for the other team, and I don't know whether LAS would have fined them to the extent that it changed the final result. (that is, assuming he knew the result beforehand.) £40 isn't a lot, but we've seen that she was having massive problems getting any sales there, so it could have been a close-run thing even with the duvets.

Yes. It would hinge on what he knew before imposing the fine and whether or not he would deliberately change the result.

If he kept the fine they would have won.

If he had not given it it would have been a very close run thing.

Right from the beginning, Lord Sugar said he personally used to churn over capital by going back to the wholesaler, two, three times within one day.

To do this, 1 member of the team out of the 3 would have to be continually on the road. Natasha who did nothing on site might as well have done nothing in the limo.

Natasha was unwilling to restock because the team still had unsold stock in the unpopular lines. This was what caused Sugar to see red. He had said from the beginning it was no disgrace to have unsold stock by the end of the day -- they retained value for selling another day.

Susan at least used her ingenuity and initiative to take a flyer in stocking/flogging femine goods which she knew much about from firsthand experience. Was Jim deterred by Melody from restocking umbrellas until too late? Melody's mobile chargers sold to some extent, but the profit margin was nowhere near Susan's bracelets selling like hotcakes at 400% profit, and when time ran out at 200%. Sadly Susan and Tom were punished for Natasha's sins. A Helenesque coup d'etat would have saved them. It was better to be ruthless than finish up jobless.

Yes, but then they would have had to have only one sales location, which would have lowered their chances. It's pretty clear that they aren't allowed to split up into more than two sub-teams.

I seem to recall that they were paying something like £1.95 for the emergency phone chargers, and selling them at £10,. That's a pretty good profit margin in my book.

Not sure where you get the £90 profit on 30 duvets from. The original sale was 9 at £10 each, which is £90 (gross). I don't recall hearing what the wholesale price of the duvets was but in the boardroom Lord Sugar talked about the petrol cost probably wiping out the "£30 odd" profit they would have made. So the profit per duvet was just over £1. That puts the wholesale price at just under £9 each. In comparison, on the street Jim sold them retail for £20, a profit of at least £11 each.

£30 would have been a pitiful result for half a business day's work, had the sale gone ahead.

No, they made a deal to bring the guy thirty duvets, each at £10, which would have made a £90 profit assuming the wholesale price was £7.

Yes, 30 pieces at £10 each. However, you're assuming the wholesale price was £7 to make the OP's figure of £90. I don't think the wholesale price was ever stated, and a profit of £3 each does not stack up with Sugar's comment about £30 profit on the 30 duvets.

It only looks good because they did so badly on everything else. The task was a disaster for both teams - so bad even the winning team didn't deserve a treat - so almost any change looks good in comparison.

They explicitly said they were making £3 each.

OK, I must have missed that bit. Who said it and when so I can refresh my memory.

Helen says it at 28 minutes (PVR AR).