So Richard pitched an existing business and got shot down for it. Yet Tom Pellerau won TA pitching a new business, but Lordsralan was only interested in Tom's existing curved nail file business.

It seems Lordsralan and some correspondents on here have very short memories at times.

I also remember a task in a previous series when he absolutely blasted a losing team for producing a shampoo in a black bottle, saying it looked like something you'd find on the shelf in Halfords.

Yet in this series he was full of praise for the winning team in a task who produced... shampoo in a black bottle.

Hypocritical or just a very short memory?

Tom Pelleareu had previously been a sole trader. He had not set up a limited company. Richard was a 50% shareholder in a limited company alongside somebody else. with Tom, Lord Sugar was joining him in business, while Richard was proposing the run a separate business alongside.

And the black bottle comments were on the household cleaner task. Not shampoo. Male toiletries are commonly found in black bottles.

So I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Isn't Tresemme in a black bottle ....................................

I think the shampoo is in a black bottle and the conditioner is in a white bottle, or it may be the other way around. Either way, female toiletries are sometimes in a black bottles as well. Lynx Attract for women (it does exist) is in a black bottle as well.

He was also a hypocrite for not allowing the toy paper skeleton but allowing the toy dingy boat. His decision is made on a whim and you have to take the wrath of it.

No, the dinghy was not a toy, even though it was bought in a toy shop. It matched the spec, which only called for a minimum length.

Nor is allowing the boat and not the skeleton hypocrisy. Inconsistency possibly but not hypocritical.

Tom was a safe option.He had done the difficult bits already. Richard raised a trust issue- fairly or not, his business raised Jordan's ownership issue, and Luisa's multiple interests issue . And his profit figures didn't suggest, that ,even if you stripped back his proposal, he would make you a lot of money doing it.

Joe and Charleine had both already expanded their businesses. Its still unclear to me why expanding an existing plumbing concern is any better than expanding an existing hairdressing , or, previously, a dance school, or fitness , business . The only difference I can see is profit totals and location . Vana looks like his big bucks option and should probably win, on past logic, unless the experts from that industry say she has no chance.

Richard was mainly attacked in the interviews for the waffle and bullshit in his proposal and the fact that the ideas were already used in his existing business. So he abandoned the bullshit and offered a straightforward idea instead. The problem in the boardroom was the conflict of interest between the existing business and the proposed new business. Sugar asked him if he would sell his interest in the existing company, so clearly his plan was acceptable if he did so.

Tom was really pitching his inventions, one of which was the nailfile. Sugar wasn't interested in his chair idea, which was the focus of the plan, but he saw potential in the nail file. I don't recall Tom ever saying that the nail file was not included.

Richard also ended up saying he would just offer a similar service to that he offers now . There's no figures on the table. And the historic figures, from doing it now , are not very enticing.

Richard may have shot himself in the foot in another way. His proposal, once stripped of the Brentisms, was for an outsourced marketing service. This raised the conflict with his existing firm that does the same thing.

The question is, however, does the firm really do outsourced marketing? It is called Yomp Marketing but looks more like a web design agency, and I think at one point Richard said as much during the interviews. If so, Richard ran smack into his own bullshit for the existing company.

It is now, it wasn't back then. I clearly remember an ad for shampoo in a black bottle a few months after Lord Sugar had dismissed the one the team had produced. It was a German make, I forget the name, but I thought wow, Lord Sugar was wrong! Since then black has become the colour for smart shampoo bottles.

The key difference between plumbing and hairdressing is that Joe changed his plan on the fly when the franchise idea was condemned, but Charleine clung to her franchise proposal. This meant it never got as far as comparing railway timetables for Plymouth or Peterborough or likely profits.

Charleine's business plan involved her retaining sole ownership of the current salon. Any expansion on that side was to be via franchises, where other people would own and run the salons. It was the training academy, wedding freelance team, and franchising operations that were on offer. No expansion plan was there. In fact it looked like the salon was going to be wound down. The academies were only forecast to have a turnover of around £100,000 by year 5.

What would the £250,000 buy in Joseph's business? Apart from kitting out a van and hiring somebody, what is there? If with 3 engineers he was making £60,000, he would need 6 engineers to make the same profit for him once it was split 50/50. He would need to double his business just to stay static.

The key thing about Tom was that it wasn't just his current ideas that were being bought, but any future ideas as well. That is where the real potential laid.

Richard never had anything to offer regardless of any changing of ideas and ownership of current businesses. Concepts such as "Raise your profile" are hardly unique.

That wasn't hypocrisy.

The brief was, admittedly, brief, but it didn't take a genius to work out that LS wanted an actual skelton, not just a paper model. Had they bought an actual skeleton - or even attempted to make the paper one - they would've (maybe, in terms of the paper one) fit the brief and won. An "anatomical skeleton" refers to bone, not just paper.

The dinghy boat had more a more specific brief, and though Gary's toy wasn't exactly what they had in mind, it fit the brief, and so was counted. Even if LS didn't want to count it, he couldn't do anything about it, as he had given a brief and it had been met.

In retrospect, I do see what you're getting at. Tenacity had been the superior team from start to finish, and though the skeleton was not counted, they should've won anyways, because they got all the items and arrived on time. Sanjay's ensemble just seemed to have no logic, but got lucky and won, even though they missed an item and arrived back late. Regardless of the skeleton, Tenacity were the better team.

His comments about black bottles not being appropriate were directed at Germinator - a household cleaning product. His specific misgiving was that it looked a bottle of engine oil.

For someone who earns 17 grand a year. Richard was so confident naturally. Gotta give him credit for that

The only reason Tom got to the final was because of his product. He was a snacking mess in business and would not have won the job series

had they assembled the skeleton model and brought it in as a whole piece it may have been passable. but it's not a skeleton, it's a cardboard box they brought back.

if you walked into your budet hotel room and found the matress and bedframe in it's flatpack state would you accept it as it is or ask the hotel to build your bed for you?

Its edited, but she clearly went back to offering expansion in Plymouth. She took longer to get there because sheprobably realised it would be too far away , and as she said, prices in London were more attractive.

He doesn't earn 17k a year, his company made 17k profit, there's a difference.

Depends what salary he and his brother are taking out of the business before the profit is calculated.

However, £17K annual profit on a 250K investment !!
In Dragon's Den this would one of those 30 second "also pitching today was Richard with his outsourced marketing plan", with shots of Peter Jones making one smart comment and all the dragons saying "No money in it - I'm Out"

No, Tom was one of the best in the series, even if his winning record didn't reflect that. What happened to him is what has happened to other people. He gets through on personal merit, and only at the end is his business plan looked at. If it's rubbish, but Lord Sugar still likes the person, they look around for what else they can do. It's pretty much what happened this year with Joseph. Jo didn't get to the final on his business plan because his business plan was unworkable. Instead he had to come up with something else. To a large extent, Lord Sugar is betting on the person not the plan. If a good person has a bad plan, the plan can be fixed, but a bad person even with a good plan will probably make a mess of it.

Absolutely agree with you about about Tom. I'm getting fed up reading posts saying he was useless but won because of his invention. He was good in tasks and never at fault for the losses he was in.

As for Joseph, his original plan was found wanting in the interviews (as were all of them) but he reshaped it sufficiently to get a place in the final. He ended up with a believable and solid plan for growth in a business he knows very well. Above all he listened to the advice he got, something Vana really didn't do (she only listened to things that gave the answer she wanted).

They didn't say what he earned. It may be that him and his brother were taking huge salaries.

Even Lord Sugar said something along those lines. Helen, who he was up against, won 10 out of 11 tasks and broke sales records for program. Tom was on the losing team in 8 out of 11 tasks.