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#1 |
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Join Date: Oct 2007
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I can't help thinking this every year but in every task we always see this last minute mad dash by the teams to sell everything at any price they can get for it.
That isn't how businesses operate in the real world. They have stock so they have something to sell when the shop opens the next day and they don't sell anything at any price just to achieve a sale. The girls this week had a much more viable long term business proposition but got slated for having stuff left over. |
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#2 |
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nottingham
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This was a task, so the candidates know they only have one day to sell. That was rather the point of slating the girls as they should've estimated how much they could sell and purchased their stock accordingly. A real-world equivelent is perishables like bread - you can't buy shedloads of rolls on the principle that what doesn't shift today can be sold tomorrow as no-one will want day-old rolls.
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#3 |
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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This was a task, so the candidates know they only have one day to sell. That was rather the point of slating the girls as they should've estimated how much they could sell and purchased their stock accordingly. A real-world equivelent is perishables like bread - you can't buy shedloads of rolls on the principle that what doesn't shift today can be sold tomorrow as no-one will want day-old rolls.
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#4 |
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Nottingham, UK
Posts: 11,878
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The girls this week had a much more viable long term business proposition...
And then their business model, of selling to tourists, would likely have been more profitable. Tourists, especially foreign tourists, are more likely to spend more money, because they are on holiday and because they are less familiar with the currency and what £1 is worth. The women were selling kids stuff, which kids couldn't afford so the parents had to pay, and parents generally have a shrewed idea of what's value for money. |
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#5 |
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Join Date: May 2008
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One could suppose no one would ever want to buy badly printed and print stained bags or teddy bears with inky finger prints on them but they did. The lady shopkeeper soon discovered she wouldn’t be able to sell on Phoenix’s tacky offerings so quickly got a refund. It doesn’t matter what's being sold, if it's perishable or not as Phoenix didn’t suffer in any way for their bad workmanship. Yet again all that matters in The Apprentice, should what's being sold be sub standard or stale, is sales.
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#6 |
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Join Date: Dec 2008
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I don't think the quality of the boys' product was an issue in terms of repeat business. Unlike the catering task, (apart from the later refunded bulk sale on Stephen's sub-team) nobody was buying the bags or teddy bears sight unseen. If they saw a bag with a poor printing job on it, or a teddy that needed a wash, and then bought it, that's on them. The only quality issue would be the bag/bear falling apart due to shoddy construction, which is nothing to do with Phoenix. Nobody was buying a pig in a poke, unlike the businesses that hired Yasmina (or Rocky for that matter, whose product for the reception was worse than Yasmina's) to deliver lunch.
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#7 |
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Join Date: May 2008
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I don't think the quality of the boys' product was an issue in terms of repeat business. Unlike the catering task, (apart from the later refunded bulk sale on Stephen's sub-team) nobody was buying the bags or teddy bears sight unseen. If they saw a bag with a poor printing job on it, or a teddy that needed a wash, and then bought it, that's on them. The only quality issue would be the bag/bear falling apart due to shoddy construction, which is nothing to do with Phoenix. Nobody was buying a pig in a poke, unlike the businesses that hired Yasmina (or Rocky for that matter, whose product for the reception was worse than Yasmina's) to deliver lunch.
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#8 |
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nottingham
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Yes, I realise it's not a perfect analogy but I simply meant that profit margins have generally been everything in these one-off tasks and as long as the customer pays up, their ultimate satisfaction doesn't matter much.
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#9 |
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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I don't think the quality of the boys' product was an issue in terms of repeat business. Unlike the catering task, (apart from the later refunded bulk sale on Stephen's sub-team) nobody was buying the bags or teddy bears sight unseen. If they saw a bag with a poor printing job on it, or a teddy that needed a wash, and then bought it, that's on them. The only quality issue would be the bag/bear falling apart due to shoddy construction, which is nothing to do with Phoenix. Nobody was buying a pig in a poke, unlike the businesses that hired Yasmina (or Rocky for that matter, whose product for the reception was worse than Yasmina's) to deliver lunch.
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#10 |
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Join Date: Jun 2004
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I would have liked to have known the sales from the Greenwich vs South Bank stalls and from the two mobile teams. I suspect that the women did very well on the base stall and Greenwich but their mobile team sold almost nothing. The men, however, probably did less well on the South Bank but better on the mobile team. If the women's mobile team had performed better then they would probably have won the task.
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#11 |
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Join Date: Oct 2009
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Yes, I realise it's not a perfect analogy but I simply meant that profit margins have generally been everything in these one-off tasks and as long as the customer pays up, their ultimate satisfaction doesn't matter much.
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#12 |
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: London
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Quote:
I don't think the quality of the boys' product was an issue in terms of repeat business. Unlike the catering task, (apart from the later refunded bulk sale on Stephen's sub-team) nobody was buying the bags or teddy bears sight unseen. If they saw a bag with a poor printing job on it, or a teddy that needed a wash, and then bought it, that's on them. The only quality issue would be the bag/bear falling apart due to shoddy construction, which is nothing to do with Phoenix. Nobody was buying a pig in a poke.
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#13 |
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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Yes true, but personally I found it bizarre. The men's products were truly atrocious: horrible graphics badly printed on nasty blank articles. The women's products were genuinely attractive and in the real world I think they might have done very well in the kind of shop they horrified with their desperate pitch. Did the men use rohypnol on their clients? I can't remember offhand any apprentice task where the losing team have had such an enormous lead in product quality.
Phoenix were not under pressure to stray away from the vicinity of the South Bank to achieve sales despite the extremely poor appearance of their finished products and making a refund didn‘t affect their profits and they weren’t penalised for the hiccup either Although a nice place to visit Greenwich Market would not have the same footfall even on an extremely good day. If the teams are told where to go (in the nicest possible sense) they weren’t given a location which provided both teams with an equal opportunity to sell considering both teams must offload their products in one day. Much was made of Sterling’s sub team travelling to London Zoo, the time it took to get there, the lack of sales, the squabbling, the long trudge back ending with a show of desperation in trying to sell to a shopkeeper who didn’t have any buying authority all neatly finished off by a (for the cameras?) telling off. No one knows what rules the teams work under as they are never explained or as in the first episode, how the locations are allocated. There‘s no need of quality control, customer satisfaction or equal opportunity for sales or artistic flair required just as there’s no guarantee the flow of traffic will not impinge on time constraints and the ability to be free to roam in any direction to sell once they have arrived also seemingly unavailable. |
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#14 |
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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Unfortunately although there was a lot of talk about margins I don’t remember hearing what either team paid for anything at the warehouse or what their charges were on the street apart from the priceof the teddy. Perhaps I looked away at the crucial moment.
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#15 |
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: London
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Much was made of Sterling’s sub team travelling to London Zoo, the time it took to get there, the lack of sales, the squabbling, the long trudge back ending with a show of desperation in trying to sell to a shopkeeper who didn’t have any buying authority all neatly finished off by a (for the cameras?) telling off. No one knows what rules the teams work under as they are never explained or as in the first episode, how the locations are allocated. There‘s no need of quality control, customer satisfaction or equal opportunity for sales or artistic flair required just as there’s no guarantee the flow of traffic will not impinge on time constraints and the ability to be free to roam in any direction to sell once they have arrived also seemingly unavailable.
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#16 |
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 4,283
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I would have liked to have known the sales from the Greenwich vs South Bank stalls and from the two mobile teams. I suspect that the women did very well on the base stall and Greenwich but their mobile team sold almost nothing.
base stall women: 350 pounds mobile team women: 250 pounds (rounded up or down a bit) |
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#17 |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 698
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We didn't get a breakdown of what each individual item cost, but the girls spent £476 to the boys' £399.
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#18 |
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Join Date: Dec 2008
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It was said in the episode:
base stall women: 350 pounds mobile team women: 250 pounds (rounded up or down a bit) |
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#19 |
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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The figures given in the episode were £440 to £225 (although these aren't exact, as they don't add up to the team's final total).
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#20 |
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 3,524
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I kind of assume the locations are decided by luck of the draw - because you're right there is no parity between the footfall of the pitches. Its better/funnier if they allow them to sell nearby each other like the tour company task last year with Baggs & Chris having a screaming row
![]() Also, the choice of the girls design was already geared towards the zoo so it seems they already knew where they would be selling although to me (maybe i missed something) the editing made it look like they made the decision to go to the zoo after the stuff had been printed. |
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#21 |
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: South Westish
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I kind of assume the locations are decided by luck of the draw - because you're right there is no parity between the footfall of the pitches. Its better/funnier if they allow them to sell nearby each other like the tour company task last year with Baggs & Chris having a screaming row
![]() Also, the choice of the girls design was already geared towards the zoo so it seems they already knew where they would be selling although to me (maybe i missed something) the editing made it look like they made the decision to go to the zoo after the stuff had been printed. I’m still trying to erase from my mind the huge quantity of cheap cheese bought to take over to France and the even more atrocious picture of it filling the waste bins on its return journey. I've spent too much time figuring last week's task out so all I'm hoping for now is for the memory of the bags to recede and not join the cheese. |
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