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.

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.

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.

That's debatable. They were lucky enough to have a team member who had relevant industry experience. Someone who knew how to work the printing machines and get good quality. The men had to learn on the job, by making mistakes and repeating until they got it right. Their quality control problems were largely due to it being their first day. If they had continued in the same business for longer, they'd have got it sussed and would have the same quality as the women's team.

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.

This isn't the first time that quality (or lack of it) has been an issue. The catering task in the series before last (I think) in which Yasmina was PM was also questionable in this direction. The thing to bear (no pun intended) in mind is that all these tasks are "one-offs". The teams are not aiming for repeat business or trying to gain goodwill. You're absolutely right - overall profit is all that counts whether those you have sold to would, in future, go around bad-mouthing you to any potential customer/client you might wish to approach. It's a dubious way to assess your candidates/teams imo (letting them win by cutting corners and to hell with the future - not exactly the perfect business model) but it's been that way for a while and the teams should know what the score is by now.

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.

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.

Which is the business philosophy that has made Lord Suralun Sugar the multi-millionaire he is today

Anyone in the vicinity may have bought the kids items but at London Zoo on a day that very much looked like a lean mid week visitor day well produced items would go unsold. Maybe someone could be enticed into buying a shoddily printed bag if they were carrying several items to fill it with and the bag were priced at below 50p with the option of dumping the offensive article when they got back home. 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.

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.

Yes i agree. plus in recent series we have seen teams winning by really small margins, even less than £10 one time if I remember rightly ... so if they paid £2 for the teddys and at the very end of the task they sold 5 of them off for £3 each, then that could have won the task.

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.

It was no surprise to realise why the boys went for tourist paraphernalia although their blotchy printing added no value. The London Eye is on South Bank and in the top 10 of London’s foremost attractions and anyone selling there would have a constantly changing swathe of visitors to target. Visitors to the London Eye, the Aquarium, food and drink outlets, pedestrians strolling or sitting on walls or benches are all blessed by also being only a few steps away from Westminster Bridge with it’s additional footfall and less than a half a mile from Waterloo station. It provides phenomenal ever changing passing trade for whatever tat is being sold.

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.

We didn't get a breakdown of what each individual item cost, but the girls spent £476 to the boys' £399.

That is a very good point, because of course the sales locations must be arranged long in advance. I should think it takes weeks to get permission to sell stuff in London Zoo. If Sterling were just told "you have Greenwich market and london zoo", they have a right to feel aggrieved. On a week day London zoo is fairly sparsely attended and a lot of those there are either school parties (where the kids have £2.50 each to spend on a decorated pencil at the end) or mums and toddlers on a tight budget as you can see from the number bringing picnic lunches instead of eating in the cafe. Shopping is way down their list of priorities.

It was said in the episode:

base stall women: 350 pounds
mobile team women: 250 pounds

(rounded up or down a bit)

I thought the boys were sold blank bags at £1 each?

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).

I though their sales were 610 and I remember him telling that the mobile team made 245 (or 225), so that is why I came to this conclusion (I forgot what the other sub-team made).

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.

The difficulty on this occasion wasn’t enitrely down to what either team spent at the wholesalers and the key has to be location. The bags the boys printed weren’t just below average, they were totally naff and they sold and the girl’s products did look good and buyable but they didn't.

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.