I'm sure everyone takes the 'realism' of The Apprentice with a hefty pinch of salt but did anyone notice how an integral part of business was conveniently or naively ignored from this week's task?

I'm referring to the price of the two products. Not once in the hour long show was price mentioned. Are we to assume the likes of Argos and John Lewis buy new products for free. Wow, how realistic.

Indeed, the show was so contrived we didn't see anyone from the teams say to Argos nor the other prospective buyers: "the recommended retail price for the chair or the cube is 20 quid and the trade price is 10 but, tell you what, if you order 200 units we can do a deal for 5 quid per unit."

Surely that's how real business is conducted?

Sugar didn't mention the price, no-one from the design companies mentioned the price (I wasn't aware design companies design products for free - research and development isn't done for nothing!) - and no-one from any store or shop mentioned the price. And perhaps most telling, the producer or editor of the episode decided not to feature the price - assuming it was mentioned in the actual filming - at any stage in the show.

All very artificial.

Sugar said at the start that what they produce must retail for £75.

Presumably prices were fixed, so no need to mention them.

"Sugar said at the start that what they produce must retail for £75."

Did he say that? I didn't hear it. If so, okay, sorry. I did watch the show from the start but I must have missed it. Even if what you say is correct - I'm not aware that products have fixed prices. I'm not a businessman but I would imagine you would negotiate on price - particularly a new product which is untested in the market place. Anyway... I can't imagine anyone would pay 75 quid for box with wheels so perhaps that was the real reason the girls had few orders but this was not mentioned in the show so who knows...

He said £75 but I didn't hear him say if that was retail or wholesale.

Yep thats right he did say at the beginning £75 retail, even 1 of the girls said she wouldnt pay 75quid for that box.

it was £75 retail but you would have thought there would have been some mention of unit costs they wanted to sell them at to the retailers as margins would have to influence the pitch I would have thought

£75 for each.

As others have said the prices were fixed and therefore taken out of the equation. This task was focussed entirely on the candidates ability to conceptualise, develop and sell/communicate a product idea. That's why the chosen metric for success was number of units sold rather than profit made etc.