Just "monkey see - monkey do" I think.

She heard James say he'd done the same thing (he hadn't - the people from Toys R Us had suggested it) and she thought she'd give it a try.

my mistake then, lol

She'll be fine.. If she does lose she'll just go back to fighting Dan Dare!

yes James doesn't look that bad now next to Bianca

True. That's a good point that went unnoticed by me.

To be fair, if his teammates had disagreed he'd have ignored them and done it anyway.

James wasn't checking to see if the others agreed - he was checking to see if his offer of exclusivity to that postcode was compatible with the deal Sanjay had closed immediately before. It wasn't a matter of anybody's else's opinion, unsurprisingly.

Last week LS said that Nick and Karen had seen strong potential in her which is why she's still there. We as viewers must be missing something... And the 6 units for exclusivity deal alone is surely not forgiveable. That's not the kind of mistake you "learn from" and don't repeat. That's the kind of thing that should make you realise you do not have a business mind.

Too many unknowns. If they could have gone to Hamley's, why wouln't they go there? Wouldn't you go to the biggest outlet first? If the other team was covering the bigger stores in W1 , why go to the same postcode? If both teams went to W1, whoever was going to the bigger stores couldn't offer exclusivity either - as soon as the other team sold anything within W1.

Its a silly quick decision - but the consequences may be there anyway - if the places they got taken to were mostly in W1. The show ended up arguing that they missed out on locations that may never have made the producers list in the first place .

Now, if the team had lost he would have had a good excuse to sack Bianca - if he wanted to keep James. But if he likes Bianca's CV and proposal , he can keep always keep her,and just make a mental note never to let her negotiate a contract without a solicitor standing by her.

Have they ever messed with the format to such an extent that Sugar has been allowed to sack somebody from the winning team? If they have then they shouldn't do it again because it makes winning the task more or less immaterial and therefore demolishes most of the show's dramatic tension at a stroke.

I think Bianca would have been saved anyway. Pamela was the project manager and essentially did little of note except make a terrible decision to the accompaniment of her usual incessant carping, pursed lips, rolleyes and patronising air of exasperation. She sold little or nothing (has she sold in previous tasks?) whereas Bianca's idiotic decision at least achieved something halfway concrete, even if it lost massive potential sales. Bianca's team still won by a pretty crushing margin despite her mistake, so it's clear that Pamela's decision was the more catastrophic in the context of the episode.

A former winner wrote an analysis of the episode in the Independent and claimed that Sugar absolutely hates the concept of offering exclusivity whether in the Apprentice or in the real world. He believes that her card is now heavily marked by Sugar as a result and she'll be gone in two weeks, (The winning team didn't actually offer exclusivity - it was demanded from a buyer to close a deal that they almost had to make given the artificial time constraints of the programme).

Bianca made a huge mistake, but what were the other two numpties with her doing apart from standing there with grins on their faces?

Surely one of them could've shot that deal down or interjected she meant postcode, it was worth scuppering the deal for a measly 6 games. So as much as I dislike James he was the only one that seemed to realise the mistake at the time.

Actually he varies wildly on this. What he definitely really hates is when you offer exclusivity right off the bat, or even worse, on someone else's behalf. This happened in Series 4 when Lindi offered a farmer's ice-cream product exclusively to a cinema chain without asking him. They accepted and the production team had to intervene afterwards and say the order would not stand. She got a right old bollocking and was fired.

But in Series 6 Chris Bates offered a similar exclusivity deal to a chain, this time for crisps, but it was at least a product the team were halfway responsible for. He still didn't think about this before going for it if I remember correctly but he secured such a huge order that Sugar praised him for the decision. I get the feeling that if the team hadn't won the outcome would have been very different.

So basically I think Sugar's stance is that it's a huge risk that you should never undertake for a new product unless you're absolutely sure and the decision is entirely yours. But he did let Chris off the hook very lightly and usually comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone else who does it.

In Series 6, Laura was heavily criticised for not allowing Boots exclusivity on the Book-Ease.

But I think the reason for that was that the product was so poor (and they knew it) that they should have grabbed any interest with both hands. And again, if they had gone for exclusivity and lost other orders because of it, they would have been in big trouble. Hindsight is wonderful!

If they'd gone for exclusivity, they would have won that task hands down, and Stella probably wouldn't have come across as such a goddess to the masses.

No, LS has never done that, though I think Donald Trump might have done so once in the US version when somebody in the winning team did something like volunteer to stay in the boardroom with the bottom 3 from the losing team because he thought he was such a strong candidate, and Trump fired him on the spot for being so stupid and putting himself in danger when he could have just gone back to the apartment with the rest of the winners...

I agree it would be a bad idea over here though, as it does make it (even more obviously) a popularity contest, where LS can just fire anyone on sight, regardless of team performance, if he doesn't like them... mind you, something like "Lord Sugar's Lightning Bolt", where he can fire someone from the winning team once a series might be fun...

I wouldn't want him to do it once a series - it would just become part of the format then. But I wouldn't mind as a one-off thing, if someone performed exceptionally badly every week. If Sarah was still in now, for example, and had never been on a losing team despite performing poorly every week, I'd support her being fired from the winning team.

The idea of exclusivity can be pretty good as a marketing tool if you know theres no one else in the physical area who'd want it anyway so basically make the buyer feel more important and might just blag a few extra units of sales but it really needs to be worked out in advance and you should be hitting the big boys first anyway and then flogging the dregs off to the smaller shops who will only but half a dozen units

Jesus Christ.

What happened in that series was the winning project manager had immunity from being fired on the next task if their team lost.
Brad had immunity but decided that as ,in his opinion, he had performed so well in the task despite the loss, he would waive his immunity and come back in the boardroom voluntarily as he was sure he would not get fired.
Donald Trump accepted his offer and promptly fired him.

Nothing wrong with exclusivity as long as the numbers back it up. Had the shop said if we get exclusivity I'll take 10,000 units a month, then no problem. But to sign away exclusivity for 6 items was bonkers. In the real world, had Hamleys etc come along and offered to buy the game, the little guy would of lost his exclusive deal right away.

Yes, you're right of course, I'd forgotten that they had "immunity" in the US version... silly Brad!

More recently in the all-star celebrity version [SPOILER ALERT!] Trump did something similar with former-series-winner Bret Michaels, firing him after the very first task for being stupid enough to come back and risk his "Winner" title, which did seem rather unfair...

^^ I suppose the lesson is don't take risks, when you don't have to!

Tactically it's the smart move, though. Letting Bianca make the blunder basically guaranteed that Solomon and Sanjay would survive the week, barring a double firing.

^^ Which in this series is quite possible, very risky strategy to take. Surprised LS didn't ask those 2, "well what were you doing, while she was selling the farm". It's pretty unforgivable to give away a deal like that, but in the heat of the moment, you can get carried away. But the other 2 just stood their like lemons, allowing it to happen, they should of stepped in.