Bianca didn't even know her pricing policy.

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

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.

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.

I get them too.

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.

He's snide about people, and his voice really grates.

SEO is something companies can do for themselves, surely.

Bianca did crap on the final task. No surprise Mark won.

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.

I think this is right - the lack of input required from Sugar is the most important factor. He's old, more or less a billionaire, and doesn't want to put effort into an enterprise that might make a couple of million, tops. Mark's keyword spamming business might go nowhere, but if it does, so what? Amsprop's Mayfair portfolio will probably make the 250 back in a fortnight.

Sugar portrayed Mark as the "risky" choice, but he's actually the "can't be arsed" one.

Which basically translated as LS was too lazy to put the effort in - which might be understandable at his age, but is exactly the opposite to the relationship the word Apprentice suggests. It doesn't suggest earn me big bucks, by doing all the work - it suggests guidance, and help. .

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.

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.

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.

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.

You might find it's closer to 20 years old. AOL used to have an advertising service called "AOL Keywords". This was back when the web was a much smaller place, and if you had enough money you could basically dominate the AOL search rankings by buying up the keywords. Pretty much the way Google et al do business these days.

Ever sat on an interview panel? Every candidate that you see that day will try their best to convince you that nobody can do the job better and they will work 24/7. Oh, and when did Mark become God?

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.

Well I find it a disappointing result because SEO and internet marketing is something which every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be doing. There are even online community forums where thousands of people who are into this get involved.
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.

That was also an example of his arrogance and as a member of the panel said, his ability to say something horrible to somebody and then brush it off with a 'Ha ha ha' laugh as though it's just humorous banter.
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.

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!

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.

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.

I can't help thinking that techobabble played its part, for those not aware of SEO etc Mark sounds credible, though at his age he's unlikely to know it all, thought thee comments from Martin Lewis were quite pertinent:

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
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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

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.

Or maybe I just prize strong respectful relationships within a work environment.
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.

A home made product is known as a prototype. Nothing wrong in that. Did Mark actually provide an example of his proposed service in action?

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.

I work in digital marketing and that is exactly how it's done. Mark said a 'minimum spend of £400'. hence the catering for small - medium businesses. he will come up with bespoke services tailored for the company and charge a monthly price dependent on the package. if the company is satisfied with the service they will stay with the company paying the same monthly rate.

12 x 3000 = £36,000

it
is
not
difficult

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.