have you seen Patrick's clothes Lucy may not have clothes experience but has more class in her little finger.

[quote=Maxatoria;62959908]Well they knew as much about camping as i do about 4th century Polynesian trade routes so its hardly surprising that both teams mucked it up badly as anyone with half a brain really should of put 2 and 2 together and gone for the cheapest and crap stuff just to make a simple profit

and given most tents these days are just about tall enough to allow an adult to sit up in the building where the hell are they supposed to allow another 2 foot for them to take a dump?[/QUOTE]

cut a hole in the roof? or just sit there with your head propping up the tent, everyone would know what you were doing, "oh look, the person in that tent spent £25 on a cardboard box to dump into".

Something else not taken into account, is that who would do their business in a tent where one sleeps, eats etc.

What that type of bog needs is a separate tent, but I didn't see any of them. I think that had a separate tent been part of that bog deal, they could have sold many of them. Demonstrating sitting on a bog where everyone could see, wasn't ever going to work.

True and you would think that the comment from Lord Sugar in week one about Patrick's design would kill his chances. Maria is his competition if fashion appeals to Lord Sugar in a way that cakes don't, or whatever Ashleigh is offering doesn't.


But how is Patrick PM in the final (if he is?) - only Lrd Sugar could have decided the PM for that team if there are only two of them - and its Maria's turn.

Unless they both want it, and Maria backs down first? If so, Patrick is a lot tougher than anyone has given him credit for, if Maria backs down before he does.

Odd that it happens like this though, the previous occasions there has been this set-up for the final (Series 4, and Junior Apprentice Series 1) each team has had two joint project managers.

I only just realised there was an Apprentice forum and this thread - doh!! Hope to join in next time. PS I'm rooting for Patrick xxx

One of the reasons both teams made such stupid decisions and lost money - also, explain why remaining stock gets added to your total? It's not 'assets' it's stuff you failed to sell - is that Sugar has fired loads of better candidates. Navdeep or Alice should be in the final, especially over Patrick.

Andrew was so clueless he proved Sugar's gut instinct/you remind me of me schtick is a load of balls and he should have fired him a long time ago.

But next week better have what I have been waiting for - a no holds barred catfight between Mad-Dog Maria and Fragrant Flower Lucy - I reckon Lucy can take down that gobby Irish nightmare with her hidden depths of kick-assabillity - you wait and see...

I found that a bit odd, that remaining stock was added... how much was each unit worth? Would it have been worthwhile buying loads and not selling any?

I think Sean is another one of those candidates who had loads of potential and would be a better finalist than Patrick or Maria.

No because stock is valued at cost price (wholesale), and to address Norrin_Radd's point in business terms unsold stock is an asset, it has value. No point in buying stuff simply not to sell it. Note that each team was given £1500 and their final totals were around £1600-£1700. Subtract the £1500 stake to find the profit they made, which wasn't a great deal, around 10%.

It would have been nice to know how the sales broke down though.

Wasn't that to prevent underselling? It would be easy to sell everything for a tenner towards closing making a loss but winning the task. Unsold stock forms part of assets unless its not worth anything.

Oh well, I know nothing about business, so...

I was surprised Stephen was the first one to be sacked tonight. Of the whole losing team he seemed the best overall despite his mistake at the cardboard toilet pitch. Lucy said she wanted to be there to be in control of it, but oddly let Stephen lead and head straight to the bottom line. I would have fired Lucy and Andrew. Lucy for being responsible for losing this week and Andrew for being on the losing team six weeks out of seven. Of the three Stephen seems to have the most business potential.

Really disappointing that Patrick is in the final, given some of the better candidates that have been sacked. He's been more or less useless the entire process, except for decorative purposes. And then there's the two very loud girls, Maria and Ashleigh. Both of whom seem to spend most of their time moaning about not getting their own way. Will be interesting to see how the relatively quiet Lucy gets on when she has to pull some weight.

It really looks as if they've picked the four who make the best TV.

In real, ongoing business yes. In this task it's just stuff they bought and couldn't shift. They will never have another chance to sell it, there's lots of businesses like that, even ones that cater for festivals like he one on the task - buy too many sausages or knock-off festival t-shirts to sell and see how much your stock is worth in a week. It should have no value - or even count against them.

Exactly right. Unsold stock has a value - broadly equivalent to its cost (in this case wholesale) price. In fact, judging the task on an asset rather than sales or profit basis is the most realistic way to value a business - it's how businesses are valued in the real world - because businesses exist over a long period of time and not in the one-off window that Apprentice tasks operate in.

All those products were resellable though in the real world - they weren't one-offs which were specific to an event. They could easily have been sold on at another festival or moved on to another seller at the same cost price (or close enough to it).

Asset value is a much fairer way of valuing any real business. In the case of one-off type products, the book value of unsold stock would be written down depending on its value/age (businesses do exactly the same thing, devaluing/depreciating 'old' stock).

Disappointing that Patrick got a free ride to the final, having escaped the boardroom altogether since week 1, when he was very fortunate not to be fired. To be fair, he was okay this week - although he should not have ignored Ashleigh's research and his pricing decisions were very odd - but he's still the weakest of the four by some distance.

For me Lucy remains the best, though I was very disappointed to see Steven go. I don't get a sense that any of them are a patch on Zara, James or Harry H from last year's series.

Speaking of James, I've done an interview with him that I will publish next week. I'll post up a link when I do. In the meantime, here's my weekly recap:

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/...-in-wiltshire/

No, the task was to shift stuff at that festival. Anything they didn't shift should have counted against them. It's not the real world, its not a real business, it was a task to sell stuff at a festival that day, and the winner should have been judged purely on who made the most profit. You could apply your logic to all the other tasks and the winners and losers would be different - you could factor in the returning customer idea, that is a real business concern always ignored by the Apprentice. It doesn't reflect how businesses are run. This was just a selling task, like the scavenger hunt has its own rules - you don't get points for saying 'well it was good we never bought that item because we'd never have resold it at a profit.' It's just a task. Sod the 'remaining assets' they are unimportant.

Er, no. The task was to shift stuff at the festival with the aim of maximising total assets - exactly as Sugar said in his brief.

My point is that you judge the value of a business in the real world based on assets, not just sales or profit. It's also harder for a team to manipulate their way to an unfair win this way. Of course this is just a task that in no way reflects the real world.. My point is that to assess a task in this way requires the candidates to treat this like they would as if it was a real business - a skill Sugar is testing out with this very task, even if it is artificial.

I'd be interested to know how they valued the unsold stock. Presumably it would have to be valued at less than the team's selling price, otherwise there's no advantage in selling it! It did make it hard to see what the right decisions would be, and I feel it left the teams not being sufficiently penalised for picking unsaleable products (the washing machine got torn into, but it was at least possibly saleable in some context, just not the one they were in, whereas I can't envisage anyone anywhere ever considering that toilet).

It's hard to judge either who should have gone - well, Patrick should have really, but that wasn't an option (seriously, the guy must have been stunned at his own luck in getting so far). Stephen failed to properly butter up the toilet man (a blessing in disguise, as they ended up with a better product, but that doesn't change his failure). Lucy's product selection was awful, and she failed to intervene to smooze the toilet man. Andrew seemed to struggle badly doing market research. Based on the task, Lucy and Stephen should probably have gone, but that would have been absurd based on the series as a whole. On that basis, Lucy was exactly the right one to go through.

If I were Andrew, I wouldn't feel too complimented by Sugar saying he reminds him of his younger self - everyone Sugar has ever said that to has been loathesome. You're in the company of Michael Sophocles, Andrew; beware!

Got to be a girl to win, which pleases me I think Patrick can safely be disregarded, but Lucy is cool and competent, Maria is a gutsy battler and Ashley knows her figures.

Patrick is kinda girly anyway

"omg, i'm the only boy" - gosh his observational powers are astounding

Not at all PC, but my immediate reaction to that outburst was "only just"

I could n't understand this either, but thought it was just me being a bit slow I ve got an O Level and a BTEC in Business Studies but I never came across that before.

Hope so neither are perfect, but given the choice, I would rather do business with Calm Lucy than be hectored by Maria, " you have nt received your order? well its obviously your own fault for not ordering right sneer"

Thanks, that makes sense. but whether its worth something or not it is still sitting there goading you, so not really an asset