I'm just a little confused about this weeks task. Was it the amount of money they had from sales + the amount in assets?

For example...

If they sold 25 Dogs for £5 each, they would have £125. But they had 10 dogs left over so they'd also have £50 worth of stock.

So would the total in the boardroom have been £175?

Thanks

We believe that they added cash in hand to the purchase price of the stock remaining.

Just to clarify, the stock was valued at the price the teams paid for it from the wholesaler not the price the teams were selling for. This means that, for the purpose of the task, stock held the same value as cash. ie. the team is no better or worse off whether they have stock or cash left at the end.

It is this that makes a mockery of LS's fine imposed on the winning team. They didn't do anything wrong by not buying more stock and arguably they gained more sales time by not doing so. So long as they didn't actually run out of stock and lose sales then they actually played the task right. Not that I'm crediting Natasha with a strategic decision though - I still think she is way out of her depth and has lucked her way through to get this far.

I agree ........ basically when they did up the task the producers probably had visions of the team going back and forth to the wholesalers every few hours. They didnt realise that actually it would take them about a day to sell the items anyway so only would need to go once.

And yes Natasha played a strategy. It was a wrong one in hindsight, but it was a strategy and as such did not deserve a fine.

What about the other team, they went back just as often to 'replenish'.

It was only wrong in that it didn't fit the strange logic big Al wanted to apply, it optimised to the metric from which a win was judged. If it was restocking of highest value he was most keen on he could simply have given them the average sale price of any given item over the two days for each one of those items in any stock that was left, that way they could invest all their cash into what would ultimately make them the most money. Just giving them the wholesale price was the wrong metric, and Natasha played to it (quite probably by luck).

It might have been more interesting if the scoring of the task was based purely on stock not cash. If the value of the stock was measured by using the average profit per item achieved by the team then it would be a direct measure of their ability to choose the right reinvestment. They would effectively be calculating the expected profit to be made from the remaining stock which would give a real measure as to which team sold the best and reinvested most wisely.

Unfortunately, I think this would be too complicated to get across in an entertainment show. The simple idea of cash + stock value created enough confusion as it was.

Several people agree that the best way to achieve what he set out to would have been to give them a much smaller starting palate.

Couple that with some means whereby they could order the items and have them delivered so that it did not take up selling time and you could achieve what he wanted which was to emulate what he did himself in the truncated time scale available..

Agreed. The fact that it took them most of the first day to sell the original stock did significantly water down the reinvestment aspect.

Yes, the ordering of stock would have been more realisitic as I guess if you were doing it for real you would generally only go to the wholesaler outside of trading hours.

I think having to factor in the time to get re-stocked was an important element of the task - the problem really was that just two days was too short to play it out meaningfully. A week would be great, but impractical, but they have had 3-4 day tasks before.

You've said it at every possible opportunity, and then a few extra times for good measure, but I've not observed the mass agreement with you.


It is likely to make for a very slow and boring task, since they could only make very small orders to begin with as they would have next to no money to invest as they hadn't made any yet. So it would need a team of "delivery men" bringing a few items at a time, through heavy London traffic, introducing a massive random element of luck into how long people had to spend standing around waiting for things to arrive. It would also be difficult to spot what was selling well with very small samples, the most basic law of statistics. You could of course give them a cash float, but then how will they know how best to invest it not having yet gleaned the experience to build the statistics.

Not really, because without the experience of the first day how would they know what to reinvest in?

Actually, it was someone else who mentioned it first. I can't claim it as my idea.

I did, however, immediately see that it would have forced the candidates to do what Sugar appeared to want them to do.

And I didn't say there was 'mass' agreement. Just that several people agreed it was a good idea. Someone elses!


Not at all. If they had enough to keep them going for four hours they could reorder after three. The margins were good so they should be able to get a fair amount of stock if they were selling well.


Nope. Sugar could certainly have arranged to take a load of stuff on sale or return that could have been stashed nearby and brought to the candidates very quickly.


Not at all. Two to three hours is enough time to see what is 'flying off the shelves'.

If that isn't enough time you are saying nothing more than that the task is even more fatally flawed than I have suggested because there simply isn't time to do what Sugar wanted them to do.

Again, you are merely saying that the task was fatally flawed from the point of view of doing what Sugar said he wanted to see.

There was nothing wrong with the task as a task. It became a debacle when Sugar threw his little boardroom tantrum and tried to nodger the result then threw his toys out of the pram by denying them their treat.

Sugar got cross with them for not buying stock again on the second day, the smaller starting stock would just have made the first day slower (or assuming your distribution network trick worked, more complicated, though in terms of business it is nonsense, it would be far more costly to have the stock at these holding locations with people on standby than just to get it in the first place). It wouldn't have forced them to buy more stock on the second day for the third non-existent day which is what he seemed to want. The way to make them do that is to credit them for the retail value of the stock they hold at the end.

I do however agree the task was crap, and as I said on another thread the reinvestment thing seemed to be an illogical bolt on, probably to make it slightly less of a Apprentice does Only Fools and Horses episode.

They did do something wrong and were fined for it.

Thanks to Natasha they lost out on opportunity -- a tangible loss which LS priced at £100 . They were given capital which most UB40 persons are not, but Natasha chose to sit on it. By refusing to try, Natasha denied LS a chance to assess each member of her team's ability to do what he did -- turn £100 into £700 million within 40 years.

LS is not looking for someone who can sell just enough to cover the rent money. That would be a different game.

They were not supposed to wait until they'd sold the entire first palette. Actually, I don't think they did wait for that. They just restocked at the end of the day regardless. They were told to restock two or three times a day, not just once. It'd probably make sense to have 2 people on a pitch selling, and one person travelling back and forth restocking, with maybe a few hours of sales for that person in between, but at least 50% of one person's time spent on "flipping". Both teams had people who were relatively poor at sales, who could do that. Both teams wasted plenty of time in other ways.


They needed a largish palette in order to have a wide variety of things to try to sell, in order to see what sold best. They weren't expected to sell the entire palette.

Basically, after perhaps the first 3 hours, they should have stopped, figured out what had sold and what hadn't, then restock with the best lines and put much less effort into the poor sellers. By focussing their attention they maximise their returns for the effort they put in.

To put it another way, the large initial palette was a classic Apprentice trap. The show often gives the candidates more resources than they need, and the candidates have to recognise what's significant and what isn't. Probably more than half the things on the palette were there as distractions.


I think that would have made it too easy. Balancing travel time against effort wasted on poor-selling items was part of the challenge. By this stage in the process, the final 6 candidates ought to have been good enough to manage it. The production team over-estimated them.

What did they do wrong which justified the fine? As far as I am concerned, unless they broke any rules of the task then fine is not justified. The measure of the task was value of cash plus stock at then end. The fact that they perhaps had more cash and less stock is irrelevant by the metric which was set out for them. For Sugar to retrospectivey punish them for not falling in line with what he wanted is unfair.

Perhaps they went against the 'spirit' of the task but as far as I can see they didn't break any rules. Besides, it didn't seem to me that the other team restocked any more frequently than the winning team.

I agree with Jepson, the task was very poorly designed. You can't blame the contestants for playing the task they were given.

I don't think any of this is relevant.

There was no indication that Jim, Susan or Natasha were ever without items to see that they were either testing, or wanted to sell.

They restocked as needed. The problem was, from Sugar's point of view, that they simply did not need to restock as often as he would have liked.

That is why he cocked up the task. The initial and continuing conditions simply were not correct for the result he wanted to achieve.

In reality, I think the overriding problem was that the available time was not long enough for what he wanted to achieve. And instead of taking responsibility for his own failure he went off on one an punished the team unjustifiably.



Nope. That just turns it into a coin flip - or rock paper scissors.

It took Helen 4 hours to do one round trip to Enfield. Normally, I can get from that part of London to Dover and back in that time in the afternoon.

You are asking the candidates to juggle far too many imponderables if you expect them to account for the vagaries of London traffic.

You're still missing the point that it's not about being left with nothing to sell. It's about efficiency of the sales effort. Not spending so much time pushing products the public don't want to buy.


They were told to restock 2 or 3 times a day. Not only did they not do that, they didn't twig that not doing it was a problem. They were working hard when they should have been working smart.


Most tasks involve travel. It's one of the things that has to be dealt with, both on the show and in real life.

They were not told that they had to restock 2/3 times a day, unless that was in the written version of the task rules. That was LS saying what he did in the past. If it had really been part of the task and they could buy anything from anywhere, both teams would have made absolutely sure to do that, even if it was a small purchase.

The nature of the task is made plain, and Nick is surprised that they aren't restocking more often. They think once a day is enough, even though they were told 2 or 3 times a day was expected. Jim mentions getting a fine for not restocking. It seems pretty clear.

I don't follow your point about "by anything from anywhere". They were expected to buy from wholesalers. Obviously they needed permission to film so they couldn't just pick any wholesaler. We don't know if they were allowed to buy things not on the initial pallet, but both teams do so and neither gets pulled up on it, so they probably could.

No.

You're missing the point that there is absolutely no evidence that the amount of reinvestment in any way affected the results. (Unless, perhaps, Natasha didn't spend as much as she could at the end of the first day thus leaving Jim with no stock at the very end of day 2.)


Again, there is no evidence that they were pushing things the public didn't want to buy. Melody and Tom were doing a roaring trade at Hammersmith station, Susan was selling well and Jim did £50 that afternoon.


You seem to be basing your entire argument on the entirely speculative assumption that they were selling things that the public didn't want. There is no evidence that was the case.


And in several tasks it turns the result into a coin toss which is why such tasks are badly designed.

We are supposed to be finding out which candidates are best at doing business not which ones happen to be lucky with London traffic on the day.

Sugar told them one thing about the nature of the task. The way it was designed and the scoring system told them something else entirely. That is the fault of Sugar for not thinking the task through properly.


He told them that that's what he did. That was decades ago and things have changed. He also already knew his market and his suppliers and, doubtless, had a much better handle on London traffic.


If that fine was legitimate it should have been explained at the outset. This is a game being financed by our money and for our entertainment. They have no business having secret rules that only one candidate seems to be aware of.


There is not one shred of evidence that they were not allowed to buy things other than on the initial pallet. It's something pulled from thin air here on DS and which people insist on dragging up even though Sugar did not bat an eyelid when told about it.

No, the task was designed appropriately. They just ignored what they were told. That both teams got it wrong obscures what the best options were.


No doubt it was in the written rules.


It's because it's entertainment that they spare us the detailed rules.


Gosh, you're being quite emphatic given that you're agreeing with me here.

The task was completely cocked up for several reasons including the random effect of unusual traffic patterns and the complete failure of both the logistics and the scoring system to in any way promote what Sugar said that he wanted.


No doubt to you but you have a habit of assuming all sorts of things that happen to support your case.


Not telling the audience the scoring rules is beyond stupid.

There's not even any evidence that they did. It's just something you are insisting must be the so because it is necessary for you to support your case.


Nice try at a schoolboy answer.

In every previous task in all series of TA we have been told at the outset and during the task (where fines have been involved) the basis on which the task will be scored.

This is the first time that a new element of scoring has been pulled out of thin air in the boardroom as a complete surprise.