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DEVESTATED by the Decision |
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#51 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Black Country lad in Yorkshire
Posts: 118,047
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I thought he'd go with Bianca jut for a change and new challenge (very different to his usual work I'm guessing), as he can invest in a business person like mark (with an idea like his) anytime can't he (there are plenty that he must come across in his usual business circles).
She even changed it in her very last interview. Didn't like Mark but He has assured us that nobody could do the job better and he will work 24/7 |
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#52 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Sussex by the Sea
Posts: 19,193
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I didn't like how he would talk about other candidates to the camera or in another person's ear. Came across as sneaky to me.
I just think it's a strange edit for a winner to have as it meant I could never root for him and so the final result feels underwhelming. Fortunately I'll have forgotten all about it fairly soon, he's not my business partner. The people who worked with him and observed him didn't call him sneaky or sly. I think some people here are reading far too much into this. They don't edit the show so people can see everyone in a positive light. They edit it to distill what everyone did into a storyline that makes sense. Unlike you I don't feel the need to root for certain candidates, so if I find someone unsympathetic it doesn't upset me. It's not a popularity contest. |
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#53 |
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 337
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Bianca priced herself out of the market, she should have listened to the market research.
I think she realised that when she was sat in front of Lord Sugar but it was too late by then. Also, her original intention was to manufacture 240 different products, that was way to costly, I think that shows she has a lot to learn in business and as LS said she would need a lot of looking after whereas Mark knew his business and would have needed less help from LS, and that is why Mark was the winner. |
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#54 |
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Greater Manchester
Posts: 3,783
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I get sales calls from these people at least 10 times a week. They barely get past the greeting before I make my excuses and end the call. It's a saturated market that companies are getting fed up of hearing from.
They've never done any research about my business and never actually have a proposition. It's as if they want to start a conversation and 'see where it goes', a bit like Mark came across the more we got into his idea. Usually, they don't know my name either which is all over my Ebay Shop, items and my blog website (which is set up as a way to drive traffic to Ebay), a basic lost opportunity as far as sales is concerned. (In fact, I've now decided to refuse to speak to anyone who doesn't know my name). I think Mark's plan seemed to be based on no more than calling people up, asking to buy them a coffee and then try and work out a way to get them up the rankings. How on earth will he deliver a personal service with every client? Maybe he'll come over and buy them a coffee to smooth the waters when things go wrong. It all sounded very 'salessey' and smacked of superficial operations and generalities. As for Bianca, my 'how on earth' with her is that they get as far as launching the idea to industry specialists and no-one's seemed to have done the basic maths with all the product options and manufacturing implications (which someone duly does on a napkin as Banca is speaking). She was making decisions on pricing based on speaking to between 5 and 8 people. It's ludicrous. If we are to believe what we are told, Sugar felt the need to follow the new world as opposed to staying with his 'old world' product lead existence even though by all accounts with the right market targeting, product orientation and pricing, this was absolutely the time to cash in, literally, on his knowledge as a product man. Having said the above, I thought Bianca came across as brilliant in the final pitch but while I'm not SAS, I'd have liked her plan to have gone through a couple more incarnations before I committed 250k. |
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#55 |
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 3,500
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He's snide about people, and his voice really grates.
SEO is something companies can do for themselves, surely. |
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#56 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 8,252
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Bianca did crap on the final task. No surprise Mark won.
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#57 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Dream
Posts: 2,797
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OMG I was totally rooting for Bianca to happen. And he let Mark win
![]() I hope someone will back Bianca for the business, I really do. |
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#58 |
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 12,080
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It didn't matter except in the sense she showed she would have needed advice. She showed she would listen to him - which was all he required., and she had adapted her plan by the end of the boardroom.
What matters is that he doesn't think its worth the time. effort, risk and potential cost compared with Mark - who is offering him a cut on his returns from doing what he does, now at minimal investment risk. Bianca needs an entrepreneur with more time, money and propensity to take risks, and probably someone who can estimate her potential in an informed way. Sugar portrayed Mark as the "risky" choice, but he's actually the "can't be arsed" one. |
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#59 |
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 34,226
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Bianca priced herself out of the market, she should have listened to the market research.
I think she realised that when she was sat in front of Lord Sugar but it was too late by then. Also, her original intention was to manufacture 240 different products, that was way to costly, I think that shows she has a lot to learn in business and as LS said she would need a lot of looking after whereas Mark knew his business and would have needed less help from LS, and that is why Mark was the winner. Bianca's task asumptions don't matter - she had adjusted her price, and lines, by the time the boardroom had ended., and she had shown an ability to listen and adjust - which is what the Apprentice idea implies. The task figures are always going to be fictions, until someone does the real research - and an online option needed exploring . . You could equally argue that Mark was totally confused. He wanted to trade to small , medium and large trailers, was happy that someone was willing to spend 3000 a year,and then came up with a plan to charge £400 a month. He then committed to home visits - which seemed not to be offered elswhere for some good reason he discounted.. . You can see why Mark was attractive to his lordship - because each worker on 20-25k could bring in 200,000 a year at £400 a visit, , with a full timetable, for a pitiful salary of a tenth of that.. But it was far from clear who would be silly enough to pay that. Cheap Labour, charging at twice solicitors rates, would take an awful lot of profit on tights sales to match it . And there's very little cost in Mark's offering to come out of those profits. Its easy money for little effort versus less money for more money and more effort. You could argue Bianca wasn't being realistic, but then Mark went off into Bagg's fields of ponies excess talking about going global. |
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#60 |
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 3,504
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That awful Karren also really fought Mark's corner in the end and really pushed for Alan Sugar to choose him. She kept bleeting on and on about how well he knows his stuff. Oh well I guess someone had to win.
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#61 |
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nottingham
Posts: 4,893
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Sugar portrayed Mark as the "risky" choice, but he's actually the "can't be arsed" one.
Their business plans were both clearly poorly laid out. How can you arrive at a selling price when you clearly have done no evaluation of cost price, or what the costs would be of different options? And Mark claims to know the business inside out yet Had not heard of the market leader? It comes across as if Roisin's flaw was having a proper business plan that enabled problems to be more easily highlighted than the half baked affairs of the other candidates. |
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#62 |
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Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 61
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After thinking about this for 6 hours now, I felt Bianca should have gone to the market research place herself to hear what they were saying, she could have shared why she chose that branding concept, she wanted the name to stand out on the pack and for the white pack to stand out against the dark colours of other luxury brands and because its matching the skin colour the consumer needs to take in only the words on the pack and not be deterred by rival packaging next to it if it was the same colour. I think Bianca's pricing she put it that high to give a good profit margin, and to make it worth Lord Sugar's investment, he needs to get a return. Then why was that small young teenager, the black girl remember saying she would pay £6 for the tights, in the audience? The product was not intended for mass market, so why would she be invited to that event? If not to throw a spanner in the works and make Bianca have to evaluate her pricing?
We all saw the price was too much, because for her to sell a lot to people that are going to work for example it needed to be 10 pound max, but the problem she was having is the return on investment for Lord Sugar. Now Mark his margins are very high and SME's are going to pay his high fees because it means business for them, corporate pricing will give high profit margins, so for Lord Sugar's return on his investment that is definitely the best option, as they showed it to us. But I can't help wondering, Mark's manipulating ways the way he played the game was to get the other candidates fired and him only to remain on Team Tenacity, so he was getting a lot of bad publicity and in all other shows in this "The Apprentice" the one who does that falls at the last hurdle, and it was set up like that also now when Mark was showing himself nervous to pitch and Bianca is the better in pitching. So it seems to me, perhaps to others on this forum maybe this has occurred to them also, that Mark was going to fail like all the others, the conniving ways catching up to them in the final, but for one problem the opponent Bianca's product giving small profit margin and branding/packaging problems, So are these people like Mark for real? Are they just actors put in to give entertainment, cause confrontation with the candidates, see Mark was earning 100,000 pound or will earn that much as a Sales Manager in his marketing industry so begs understanding why he couldn't save money to open his own business??? Why rely on The Apprentice show for funding? So I think his just put there to make the show entertaining, and maybe even paid to be there to do that. But because Bianca's business wouldn't give the required return they just made him the fake winner just to pretend but really he received his wage already for what he has done in the show for entertainment. |
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#63 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Nottinghamshire
Posts: 2,403
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Mark's 'idea' is ten years old, Googleads and words beat SEO off years ago
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Didn't like Mark but He has assured us that nobody could do the job better and he will work 24/7
![]() I think the main problem with Bianca's idea was that it couldn't be patented. I can't see any conceivable way that you could patent tights and/or skin tone colours. Surely they're classed as "prior art", as they've been done before (so it would fail at the "novelty search") and unless she's completely revolutionised the way they work or something it wouldn't happen. The relevance here is the fact that she herself admitted she was willing to drop from £24 to £6. That's a 75% cost reduction. If she can do that, what's to stop an established player in the market squashing the price even further because they have the ability to create stock to order, and there's very little in terms of outlay as they're already established. There's also the "Primark effect" to think about. Primark will send people to fashion shows where they look at what's trending, take a few sketches, get a few photographs and then produce cheap imitation copies. Yes, the quality is crap, and yes occasionally they do get annoyed designers sending them legal threats which occasionally are successful, but it wouldn't happen with tights. There's no way her company could send a legal threat to any company that decided to rip off her idea and produce their own based purely on the colour of them. They'd have to, in fairness, send legal threats to every other company that was producing the same or near the same colour. I was listening to her on YBH last night and the way she was speaking was almost like a marketing pitch at times, and I'm wondering whether she's already got financial backing from somewhere else. She may not be heading up the company, but she could have some sort of design or consultancy role. As for Mark's business plan? Yeah, good luck with that one. |
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#64 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 65,745
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He's snide about people, and his voice really grates.
SEO is something companies can do for themselves, surely. Such a boring and unimaginative business plan which isn't even unique. As another poster said, what's the point of all the tasks which claim to seek out creative skills and business innovation if all he's going to do is take on somebody who just takes a pre-existing idea that many other people are already doing and just does that? It's not even an idea which Mark has thought up by himself. And I think it's insulting to viewers for AS to try to attempt to portray himself as taking a gamble and a risk by taking on Mark's proposal, where embarking on something such as Bianca's idea would be a proposal which be the furthest from his comfort zone. What this series seems to be teaching us is that AS will be more likely to go for a technology based proposal as it's within his comfort zone, and that there's little chance of AS going for things such as cupcakes, healthy food, or tights, which he has absolutely no experience in. |
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#65 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 65,745
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This is the impression I got.
Their business plans were both clearly poorly laid out. How can you arrive at a selling price when you clearly have done no evaluation of cost price, or what the costs would be of different options? And Mark claims to know the business inside out yet Had not heard of the market leader? It comes across as if Roisin's flaw was having a proper business plan that enabled problems to be more easily highlighted than the half baked affairs of the other candidates. Perhaps that's a useful ability which AS likes to see in candidates. 'Not that I've heard of you', how dismissive of him was that? I know that he'd put me off. |
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#66 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 2,933
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Do you actually know what Devastated means? Its when someone close dies or your house burns down or you lose your job with not much chance of getting another. Not when the person you prefer does not win a reality show - get your prirorites right mate and stop over dramatising!
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#67 |
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Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 1,228
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Hahaha told you so!!! The best man won.
You can't take anyone seriously who has no idea on price, product range and depth, mass market or luxury market - all at the final stage of the show. Oh, and with a home made product in a bucket of dye and a hairdryer. No brainer at all. |
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#68 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 921
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I wanted Bianca to win, didnt like Sugs at all he came over as arrogant and a manipulator, has LAS been manipulated out of his £250,000? Bianca was way overpricing her product and didnt listen to the feedback about the pacwhich some in the industry considered cheap looking, she changed her pricing policy but it was to late as the final was lost, even though i didnt like Sugs i think he promoted his business better and it was fairly obvious which way LAS would go early on in the final challenge.
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#69 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,486
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That awful Karren also really fought Mark's corner in the end and really pushed for Alan Sugar to choose him. She kept bleeting on and on about how well he knows his stuff. Oh well I guess someone had to win.
The real hope for Mark is Lord Sugar's brand adds biz legitimacy in a crowded market where there is a massive lacuna of trust #apprentice 0 replies 15 retweets 23 favorites Reply Retweet15 Favorite23 More Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis · 13h 13 hours ago SERIOUSLY? Investing in SEO with a guy who says knows all after 2yrs. I've run UK top 100 site for 10 and am still learning #apprentice |
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#70 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,486
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Hahaha told you so!!! The best man won.
You can't take anyone seriously who has no idea on price, product range and depth, mass market or luxury market - all at the final stage of the show. Oh, and with a home made product in a bucket of dye and a hairdryer. No brainer at all. |
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#71 |
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Titan Uranus
Posts: 31,966
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They all talk about other candidates to the camera. Every series. At least Mark didn't commit the ultimate reality show sin of being "fake" (which you ready about in horrified tones on the Big Brother forum for example). He made no secret of his aims. He wasn't nice to people to their face then stabbing them in the back. Surely a plus point for him there?
The people who worked with him and observed him didn't call him sneaky or sly. I think some people here are reading far too much into this. They don't edit the show so people can see everyone in a positive light. They edit it to distill what everyone did into a storyline that makes sense. Unlike you I don't feel the need to root for certain candidates, so if I find someone unsympathetic it doesn't upset me. It's not a popularity contest. I think the only time you should be ragging on a colleague is if they've made a huge mistake and they should suffer the consequences rather than yourself. Also if we start pulling apart the edit for one candidate, then you might aswell remove your opinions about every single one of them because everything is so edited that you can't really trust anything. But people only do that when it's a candidate they like coming under fire. |
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#72 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 7,604
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Hahaha told you so!!! The best man won.
You can't take anyone seriously who has no idea on price, product range and depth, mass market or luxury market - all at the final stage of the show. Oh, and with a home made product in a bucket of dye and a hairdryer. No brainer at all. |
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#73 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 1,228
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He didn't need to cos Sugar knew he was the winner as soon as the Interviews stage was over. Anyway, Sugar said on the You're Hired section that there was a lot of technical talk during the presentation (which obviously didn't make the final edit, perhaps due to being a bit dull) where the head of Google UK sang Mark's praises. Bianca on the other hand knew sweet FA about the hosiery industry, or exactly what her product range was going to be. Total no brainer.
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#74 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 412
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To be fair Mark had no idea on price either for his team to come back and state that they'd found a prospect willing to pay £3K a month (which Karen casually rounded up to £36K a year in a breeze) was laughable.
12 x 3000 = £36,000 it is not difficult |
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#75 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 3,411
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I like Bianca, but she did unfortunately come across like a rank amateur in this final task. Did she really know why she was using the word 'luxury'? Did she really know the tights market as well as she said she did? She started off at £35 for one pair of tights. Which was in fantasy la-la land.
That's the sort of pricing that someone would guess at, not research and work towards. It felt like she was basically winging it and it would have been pot luck if she'd managed to actually make the £250k back or not. Mark seemed the obvious choice to me. A bit of a dull business to many of us perhaps, but Sugar's not stupid. |
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