That is what was said exactly.

Event staff, if not agency employed, have traditionally been paid in cash.

Quite right. She paid her staff cash in hand.
Her business is registered and she will submit accounts and pay tax.
People have either deliberately or through lack of attention, misunderstood the tax enquiry.

I have highlighted the most likely reason.

No she didn't. She said she got the idea to sell skin cream while working doing it for someone else. She didn't say she nicked their products. You might as well argue that whoever she was working for stole the idea from The Body Shop.

Agreed.

Yes I have 2 and although it is possible that she had some unused time I did not get that impression from Susan. She said she had worked hard on her degree

OP you're so naive....all the big players out there steal ideas from each other!

The difference comes down to the finished product which each company (L'Oreal, Lauder, Clinique, Gatineau, Decleor, etc) claims a better product...not idea BUT product/result.

Susan made her own product with her own combined thought ingredients.

Presumably neither being in business related subjects?

This is the website for Susan Ma's business:

http://www.tropicskincare.com/

Yes, she's selling cosmetics, and no, she's not the first to do so. However, there can't be many completely unique products that have never been on the market before. If someone wants to start up a pizza business, should they be prevented from doing so because others have done it before them?

I'm not personally impressed by Susan at all, but to be fair, most business is based on "stolen" ideas and skills!

No so it is lucky that I run my own small business.

Susan was exposed as a BS merchant and a clueless chancer last night.

She's young, has some daft ideas and often talks utter nonsense, but nevertheless I think she has great potential as an entrepreneur, and probably more than any of the other candidates. Her youth and naivety quite rightly told against her in the competition, but I think that Sugar's comments about keeping in touch with her showed that he saw her talent, raw though it still is.

Reading through the testamonials on her website - every single one of them reads as though it were written by Susan Ma!

What a thing to suggest!

Admittedly some of them do have a hysterically enthusiastic note that sounds a little like Miss Ma herself, though! Can customers really become so wildly excited about a simple moisturising cream or something?

http://www.tropicskincare.com/static/Testimonials

I believe you have this the wrong way round. I work as a formulator albeit not in cosmetics but principles are the same. It's doubtful the creams she used to sell were patented as you have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove they are novel. The formula may have copyright. In which case susan would have a case to answer IF she copied the formulation exactly. You can't patent or copyright raw materials/ ingredients as they are usually commonly available things. You can however patent a formulation, if you can show novelty, as the formula is what makes it "special"

It would surely depend on the state of someone's skin before they tried the product. Your observations indicate you might not be female but be assured there'd be no skin cream sold anywhere to anyone if it didn't have an affect that was to the purchaser’s liking.

Yes - this makes more sense.

I don't really agree with this - I think moisturising is mostly a habit, or rather, the effect which it most notably has is that it makes the skin feel less tight than when no moisturiser is used. That effect can be gained by the cheapest of moisturisers, but most women buy much more expensive moisturisers - for example spending ten times as much, but without ten times more noticable difference.

Sorry but I do not believe that Susan made a £1000 selling her stuff in a weekend which is I presume Sat and Sun. These markets are only open for a set number of hours and there is no way she could have made a £1000 profit, even I doubt turnover.

There's ungents and skin creams on the market at much higher prices than Susan's.

Susan's products are not overly expensive but as they are available to purchase on line she's been able to increase her customer base by making them available to a wider market.

Have you ever been to Greenwich market???

I have (used to live close by) and trust me it is a very busy market with a very high footfall both from tourists and from locals coming down for Sunday breakfast/brunch/ lunch. The same traders are in the same general area of the market week after week and the good pitches in the covered area and the site next to the cinema) don't come cheap. Its a very busy and popular market for both buying and selling - and there are a lot of local residents who go for the whole natural beauty products/ organic cotton clothing/ handmade jewellery/ home made sweets type of stall.

With quality products and a good saleswoman - it is QUITE conceivable that Susan could TAKE £1000 in a weekend and even MAKE £1000 on a busy summer weekend or during holiday periods.

As LS pointed out on the beauty treatments task, there is a huge markup on these products

In many industries, the companies put specific non-competition clauses into contracts to prevent it happening. If you have such clauses you have to be very careful when striking out on your own not to get sued by your old company. (It's something my father went through - he was an estate agent. He didn't get sued but he did have to be careful.)

Obviously Susan's employer didn't have any such protection. And probably she didn't have any protection from the students she hired copying her business model either. She just hoped and trusted they wouldn't.

I think anyone entering into business with Susan in future would be well advised to get their legal protections in place first.

Susan said how much it cost to have products monitered by a chemist. Nothing came out at the interview stage that she hadn't done as she said so it's pure speculation that she hadn't done what's required.

if she was making say a £3 margin per product (taking into account packaging etc and petrol) she would need to sell 150 items each day.

one item every 3 minutes for 8 hours each day sat and sunday