I think the girls got their menu's printed free by telling the printers they could include their logo. Not entirely good publicity though - Sir Alan made some remark about the quality (or lack of it).

I seem to remember that in one of the early series, the girls tried the free publicity angle. Not sure about the task, but think they were making food products to sell at a country market and were trying to get the services of a cook for free; someone else may remember the specifics.

They shouldn't have had to be told. They should have known.


Maybe they're not allowed to say that it's for The Apprentice.
It could influence decisions and give a false impression of their skills.

Margaret or Nick, and a camera crew, hovering in the background might be a giveaway, though.

Yea- I know it's off the topic but I've often wondered this myself. It's probably in the rules that they can't SAY anything about the free BBC publicity, but they'll obviously know with all the cameras and Nick and Margaret. Don't suppose it matters though- it's something that will work to the advantage of both teams so nothing really unfair...except that Margaret is so much more of a legend than the bloke so her teams probably get more sales

I think the presence of TV cameras makes a number of the buyers, customers and whatever behave more liberally than if the camera wasn't there...

They weren't additional criteria that Sir Alan introduced. Initially Sir Alan was only saying that they shouldn't have offered exclusivity without first consulting the team leader and/or the farm. They weren't breaking any "Apprentice" rules by offering exclusivity, it was just stupid to decide to do it on a whim without first consulting the other sales teams (to ensure it was ok and also that the other teams wouldn't jeapordize the exclusivity).


The only reason Sir Alan said that some of the sales would have been deducted was that some of the sales were contrary to the exclusivity contract that the team themselves had put in place. The problem was Lindi/Raef/Jennifer did not inform the other team who then unknowingly broke that pub chain exclusivity contract by selling to another pub that was part of a different chain. Therefore at the very least Lucinda's pub deal was void, and possibly the pub chain one too. Those are the sales that Sir Alan was saying would have been deducted, and quite rightly so - as the farm couldn't have legally fulfilled both orders!

absolutely - exclusivity should have been a bargaining chip and they should have consulted with the team leader. also, it would depend upon the limitations - both duration and type of outlet.

offering an 'exclusivity' unlimited in time could be detrimental to the business.

even so, they looked the better team overall.

That's your interpretation - and a fair one - but not quite why Siralan was wanting to nullify their sales.

He rubbished the idea entirely!

Because it was such a small chain. It wasn't worth doing the deal at the expense of losing other, potentially greater, sales, perhaps to a nationwide chain
As he said - there are some deals you have to walk away from. That was one.

Again, another interpretation. Any deal - huge chain or not; advantageous or non-advantageous - would have been nullified had Siralan known it'd been signed on that basis.

Absolute rubbish. He was saying he would have negated all of the exclusive deals because of the potential effect on the farmer! There were some potential deals which had to be curtailed because they breached the exclusivity deal earlier agreed, but those were potential deals and not actual deals and did not feature in the sales figures. You have completely misinterpreted what happened.

I'd love to see your business flourish with all these exclusive deals.

You approach a small chain of 6 shops, offer them this wonderful exclusive deal, then go out and offer it to a large chain of shops under the same deals. The problem for your company is that the one of the chains hear about this and sue your ass for everything your company has for breaching the contract you made with them.

Perhaps this will illustrate to you how stupid that Sales team were. The biggest problem is that it would be the FARM footing this bill as it was their product the teams were selling. The teams were out of line offering this, whether it was negated later on is immaterial as there was a verbal contract between the farm and the buyer for that product.

You mean them Lucinda selling to a different pub, when she didn't know about the exclusivity deal?
Yes I agree , but I was thinking of the cinema deal which didn't have legal implications, but it did have far reaching financial ones and I understood that he meant that one as well.
Perhaps not.

BTW - Was anything actually signed?

I didn't see that bit.

Sugar asked the team if any potential deals were cancelled due to a conflict over exclusivity and Lindi confirmed that one sales lead was affected.

I would have deficated Masonry if I were the farms... I'd authorised the sale of Ice Cream to places, not to tie my hands. If the teams had called me up to see if I was happy with with exclusivity, then fair enough, I might have even agreed, but not to even call the farm to say "are you happy with this as its going to seriously affect what you can do in london for 3 months" is unforgivable.

Jennifer didn't even set a time limit on the cinemas.

Sorry to burst your respective bubbles, however:-

In the scenario that played out in front of us we had the farmers as the suppliers of the milk that went into the ice cream whilst clearly the Apprentices were the manufacturers/distributors, but more importantly the owners of the product, the brand and its trademark. As such, they had every right to set up whatever terms they wanted. Harsh but true!

If the farmers don't like it, they can withdraw the supply of their milk to the Apprentices but in essence it doesn't stop them (i.e. the farmers) supplying to any rival manufacturers/distributors, who in turn may supply to rival chains. The farmer has an indirect link only to the ice-cream product and no ownership whatsoever.

missfrankiecat, being a good Apprentice entails understanding the wider aspects of business, not just the tiny part you've quoted...as well as the harsh realities of the world of business.

As for Scots Dragon, you've managed to missed the point entirely! No-one's saying exclusivity deals are great in all instances. Those astute enough to cast a critical eye over this week's episode are questioning why they were completely ruled out.

So in fact they were additional criteria which ought to have been made clear from the start seeing as they'd done nothing wrong!

:yawn:

I think (emphasis think) that the ice cream belonged to the farm, not just the milk. When Lee and the woman from the farm were making the ice cream together, he said something on the lines of 'we're going to be making a fortune' and she said, smiling, 'I'm going to be making a fortune' and he was agreeing - I would take that to mean that while ownership of the products was not spelled out in the programme to us, it was made clear to them that these weren't their recipies and if they came up with something brilliant it belonged to the farm not the individual Apprentices. Legally anything else would be a nightmare, surely? What would happen if they had a brilliant idea and all six members of the team were claiming it as theirs?

Yes, in the real world a supplier makes money when the end product sells. Doesn't give them any ownership over it, though.

But I agree it could have been made clearer, otherwise it ruins my enjoyment...and this week's was just abysmal.

SweetFA - I hope this doesn't seem like I'm arguing with you, I'm just confused. How can the Apprentices be the company supplying these pubs, etc with ice cream over months, when they have ceased to have anything to do with the ice cream now the task is over and won't exist as a company in any sense for very much longer? The pubs will now be trading directly with the farms, won't they? I don't see how the Apprentices can be the owners? I think they were simply selling on behalf of the farm, like reps - a bit like previous tasks: I can remember one where they had to sell in luxury items like lamps to shops.

Has any item invented in an Apprentice task gone on to sell for real?

They're not real-life cases, just tasks/scenarios for the show.

Any worthy ideas may get developed afterwards.

So if this is the case, what happens now? Do the candidates now have part time jobs making ice cream from the milk supplied by the farm; so they can continue to produce Ice Cream for these exclusive deals? I've missed the point, guess I missed a lot more then the point if this your belief. The candidates made one batch of ice cream on behalf of the farm, who were already making ice cream in their own farm buildings and selling it to the local area. Why would they give up those facilities to a bunch of wannabe's indefinitely.

So what role did the farms partake in this whole task - supplier of milk? From what I saw, they supplied the milk, machines, eggs and a whole lot more then just the milk. Would be hard for the candidates to make ice cream with all that withdrawn.


No body has argued that there was nothing to say exclusive deals couldn't be made, as you say it is sometimes a good deal. However in this instance it wasn't something the Apprentices should have been offering. They own nothing of the product (contrary to your belief), they only supplied the grunt work to make the flavours and labour. The way you make this out, it would be like SAS letting some oink from the mail room, design a new phone for Amstrad and telling him to sell it. If he followed your example, SAS would be wondering why his company is selling his new product; exclusively to Joe's Hardware emporium down the road when he has already made a deal with Curry's.

I think this is the first time they have created something, albeit only some flavourings and I wouldn't be surprised if that's all they did. There were farm staff there, presumably making the ice cream when the cameras were off.

Haven't they always had to make use of goods/resources already on the market?

In reply to the past few posts.

The farmers were not supplying the milk. They were dairies already producing their own ice cream, although they only sold locally. This was said in the show.

The candidates task was not (just) to produce ice cream, but create new flavours, and help the dairies to open up distribution in London, which they had never done before. This was not just a case of the farms providing milk to the candidates so they could make their own ice cream.

The dairies still retained ownership of the products and the brands.

Here is what SAS said in the briefing: "I have selected 2 farms that you're going to visit today, and those two farms specialise in making ice cream, but they don't sell in the London area yet. What you're going to do is develop several flavours of ice-cream to expand their business into London. You're going to go out and sell those flavours to the trade."

I know that things from the US apprentice definately do get used... The most notible one is the Meatball pizza that Dominos sell.