Yes, makes me think she's not a businesswoman she just fluked it with her cake shop and now she can only see that side.

I would be surprised if she did this all by her self too. I think her parents played a large role in getting to set off.

Perhaps you misunderstand me.
Its not the people doing the buying I aim at. The saleslady or the Tesco store manager is not doing the buying. They are not the ones rejecting you later.

I did mention that one cannot really do business at least the first time on the phone or net.
You have to go out to meet them. The reason they are nice to you on the phone is because they want to get rid of you and its easier that way than arguing with you.
Most people are looking to make a profit not just LS. They will buy something they can sell.

I do watch the selling to stores tasks. I still dont understand how they work since I suppose the stores know its the apprentice and there is no real order anyway going to be made. So its all about how they 'like' the candidates not the product. I have already suggested that no one should be able to make a pitch twice and that another member of the team should also have a chance, to give us an idea how good he is at pitching.
Its not the way I go about selling.

Wouldn't be surprised, nor that her ex-hubby helped out in, ahem, 'better times'.

Could i add myself to the list of baffled re: Luisa's 'plan'? I could barely make any sense of it at all - Baker's Toolkit would seem to be just another link in a chain that is, according to Luisa herself, too long and prone to delays anyway. And unless she's going into manufacturing, I'm not sure how wise it was to slag off suppliers, as she twice did last night. She's going to have to get stock from somewhere...

According to Luisa's latest tweets, Bakers Toolkit will sell its own brand new products which are not on the market currently.

It will be sold to supermarkets, big hobby stores like hobbycraft, independent retailers and online retailers.

It will have better margins for retailers and are more targeted to hobby bakers.

Still unclear what these own brand products will be.

It also sounds different from last night's show where she appeared to be targeting other cake shops, although Steve very accurately pointed out that she was selling items clearly aimed at home bakers.

Luisa's "Baking Toolkit" -- how did she get to the final without even a name for her brand?

Yes, though I assume that there is some overlap in the products. It looks as if she is going up against Tala which you get in places like John Lewis and Robert Dyas. http://www.talacooking.com/

Exactly.

Someone on twitter pointed out that the name doesn't look great when set out in full: bakerstoolkit

I was wondering that last night - and the same appeared true of Leah. You would've thought that if these really were serious business proposals that a lot of the marketing would already have crystallized in the contestant's mind months before...

Was baffled by her proposition but even more baffled that Lord Sugar appeared not to be. What a terrible final!

In The Independent :

Doubts cast over Luisa Zissman's business claims

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-8714526.html

I wonder if they've been reading our thread?

Tbh, I think Leah had the opposite problem and was like one of those women who have been planning their wedding since they were five (not Neil's wife, obviously). Leah had hit upon Niks being skin backwards so long ago that she was blind to its obvious flaws. All through the task, her team was frustrated because Leah was judging their efforts against a vision she'd nurtured for months.

As contrasted by Leah's well planned branding. Oh wait....

So she's targeting retail consumers rather than the trade, so her business plan was flawed then.

Very probably, google would throw it up easily enough. But don't forget Claude Littner had access to all the accounts information to support her claims. So the figures must stack up, even if the claimed business track record isn't exactly what it seems. Speculating about the truth here is useless without access to all the facts. Anything else is just gossip.

I seem to remember a similar backlash against Susan Ma's claims a couple of year's back. Yet she still impressed Lord Sugar enough to get investment from him despite not actually winning.

Fluked it? Sorry, but she showed herself to be a very capable leader and business person in the tasks. She impressed both Nick and Karren face to face, not via edited highlights as we get. Whether or not she got outside help with her businesses isn't relevant to the show. Everybody gets outside help in one form or another. IIRC a previous series contestant had been given a slice of the family wine business to make a success of.

Maybe they should follow ex-Dragon James Caan's advice and be given help from family members. But that wasn't quite what it seemed either.

http://bakeryinfo.co.uk/news/fullsto..._business.html

This article lists her Husband as the COO of "The Baker's Toolkit"

Bearing in mind this is the website of the UK's only Bakery trade publication - there has been zero coverage of Luisa's Apprentice "Journey" on there.

Mind you - their main advertisers would be the "hopeless" competitors she was slagging off.

It does clear quite a lot up: "The Baker Shop in St Albans, and the website dixiescupcakery.co.uk, are both trading names of Boutique Trading Ltd, which lists Ms Zissman as both director and company secretary under her real name of Louisa Christina Zissman. A company records search shows no other businesses owned or run by the Apprentice finalist."

So, her two actual businesses are in some trouble as the current liabilities significantly exceed current assets + cash. It looks like one of those zombie companies sustained by cheap bank loans secured on the fixed Assets (property essentially).

Just to add to a couple of specific points ...

1. Quite. When you're dealing with a large chain of stores, the store manager has no discretion over what they stock - the buying decision is made in head office. Of course, that's different when you're dealing with independents or small chains, where the shop owner/manager will have the ability to choose what he/she wants (at least to an extent).

2. Absolutely the stores are playing along with the fact this is an Apprentice task. Asda, who seem to be the most willing to place orders, always seem to do this in a store rather than at head office, where such meetings would normally be held (presumably so the candidates don't have to travel to and from Leeds, where their HQ is). They know full well these products/brands are created on the fly and not done over the months it would take to produce a real new product.

Also the decision-making process is decidedly odd. Placing an order after taking Neil's word that they would improve the ready meal recipe? Ludicrous. If the supplier got a second chance (unlikely), they would have to come in again to do another taste test. They would also have to outline what the new ingredients (Scotch bonnets and pineapples were mentioned - neither of these are cheap) would cost, as this would impact margins and pricing. Ready meals - like many food products - is a numbers game where quality is balanced against cost. Anyone can produce a better product, but can they do it cheaply enough to meet a retail price point of X?

She's doing two things. She's targeting retailers in the trade who would then sell to consumers, as well as to independent shops. If she's operating a website, I guess it would also be possible for consumers to order direct from her, but that's not what will generate volume for her - it will be deals with the Tescos, Hobbycrafts etc of this world.

I remain dubious about the financial viability of her model. When you're acting as a wholesale supplier, margins tend to be thin - as was mentioned during the final, you have to have big volumes to generate profit in this kind of business. If she can't secure big orders with big retailers or chains, she'll be in trouble.

My point was that no one really likes to make decisions like if they should buy and stock a product and prefer if its done for them. If they make a mistake they can lose their job.
The best people to use to do it for them are Tesco store managers who cant be blamed afterwards. So if its a mistake no one gets the blame. And usually a lot of store managers wont be making mistakes. Anyway they usually make a trial at one store where the store manager has said he can sell it.

Although I mentioned Tesco where I did not get in using this method, it did work in other small chains.

I also mentioned that unless youre a manufacturer the large supermarkets will one day 'miss' you out. They can always go straight, and when they start selling you can close down.
This kind of business is only so good till the large supermarkets get into it. I have seen this often. Unless you have a product they cant get hold of easily, like made overseas, the manufacturer himself will approach them once he sees they are selling his product.

I shall add the first thing in approaching a shop with a new product is not price. You have to prove there is a demand. The apprentices should be showing their new product to groups and getting them to say they would buy it and they find a need for it. This should be the main thing of the pitch proving its saleable. Price and construction can always be modified.

As far as I can see, the shops like Asda who agree to buy thousands of a 'non' product A and nothing of 'non' product B is just showing their liking for the candidates.

At the moment the supermarkets are not in the 'cake' business. The articles they do sell from it are hugely overpriced. Pound shops also have some stock of them. It is not a simple business at all. I suppose this kind of cake making is mainly for 'rich' ladies with nothing to do. They would pay the price for superior products.
It will depend a lot is that is what she sells.

Yep, I know what you meant. As I said, it's not that Tesco store managers don't like to make decisions - they make hundreds every day - it's just that such decisions are taken centrally. And for very good reasons - co-ordination, economies of scale, control etc.

Your point about supermarkets eventually elbowing out brand manufacturers is a good one. That does indeed happen a lot. There are plenty of manufacturers out there who can manufacture private label products at a cost much lower than a small specialist like Luisa would do. Plus, of course, big chains like Tesco have strong sourcing operations which mean that (if it's worth their while) they can source directly from suppliers in the Far East just as easily (and usually much cheaper) than Joe Bloggs can.

It's interesting to get your views and experiences from your side of the fence, as I've sat on the other side of it and know exactly how the Tescos of this world work. Fundamentally, Luisa's business model is much more difficult to (a) set up and (b) sustain than she makes it out to be. That's not to say she can't succeed, but it's an uphill struggle.

The Independent journo should have consulted us before using the facts on this thread.

If he had done a proper search (or asked us), he would have found that Louisa (and Boutique Trading Ltd) are directors of General Trading Boutique LLP. The LLP is the one that trades as The Baker Shop. However, key financial data isn't freely available as it's effectively a sole trader.

Luisa tweeted that the press can't see her accounts because her two biggest businesses are sole trader accounts and the other (Boutique Trading Ltd/Dixiescupcakery) 'is like a hobby'. How very convenient.

Convenient, absolutely. but hardly unusual for a sole trader, who does not need to report financials in the same way as a PLC, right?

Was the Independent journo an entertainment writer or a financial journo? The latter surely wouldn't have made such a basic error. Whereas I'd be surprised if an entertainment journo had more than the first clue what to look for.

The good thing with a Sole Trader is you can make up any figure for your turnover and no-one can verify it. (Apart from HMRC...) Handy for the Apprentice...!

It's why people prefer doing business with actual companies since their accounts are in the public and you can tell when a company is about to go tits up.

She likes her cupcakes doesn't she .