The opening of this week's episode of The
Apprentice appeared more like an eviction night
on Big Brother 7 than a BBC programme about
Britain's business elite. With Luisa playfully painting
Jordan's toenails, Natalie and Alex racing to answer the phone
(it's a recorded message and really not that
exciting - not that I was ever up early enough to answer it). And
last but not least, Myles in a thong (yes… really).
An eyebrow raising opener then before the teams were whizzed off
to the Angel Building, which is a fantastic office space I
have had the pleasure of visiting myself. The
task this week was to design a storage space solution but in the
field of flat-pick furniture. Nice work from the producers.
So the candidates are whisked away from the pleasure of
peering into Lord Sugar's nostrils, the last time they will do
that until faced with him once more in a plumped up chair
across the boardroom table.
Brainstorming
Thus begins the team's brainstorming session, to give you
some sort of perspective on this, we had exactly 45 minutes on our
product design task last year to conjure some ideas. Anyone who has
partaken in brainstorming sessions, which is almost
everyone, will know how difficult it is to agree on a
good idea in such a short amount of time. I know some
solutions are inexcusably ridiculous but this is why on The
Apprentice you always end up with products that are either
'multi-functional' or solve problems that don't exist.
Take last year's multi-purpose composter for this year's
multi-purpose plastic cube. The ingenuity of last year's
bath shield that solved the problem of
water getting splashed in the bath, was only matched in originality
by this year's chair which solves the problem of not having a
chair.
The boys team, lead by Jordan, smelled half a good idea from
Alex and decide to run with it. In these tasks essentially you have
two fall guys, typically the ideas man and the salesman. So when
someone enthusiastically wants to run with something it's
best to let them do so and if it's half
sellable, make sure you're part of the sales
team. Don't do what Sophie does and do nothing (more on
this later).
Over on the girl's team, led by Natalie, the
creative juices overflow and the concept of the plastic
container on wheels is born. To be honest with the hair,
styling and makeup from the girls this year I
wasn't exactly surprised to see that the aesthetics
of their product was somewhat overlooked. Kudos to Rebecca though
who was the only one on the girl's team who noticed their product
wasn't very good.
So onto the sales, and the girls were up against it trying to
shift any of their grey plastic wheelie-box debacle. And in what
must be an Apprentice first, it seems that the product was so
hopeless that the design team who built the prototype (and
are blooming marvellous) left a note saying
they weren't able to finish it off…or couldn't be
bothered, you make your minds up.
Jordan, as PM makes the risky decision to not be in the big
pitches with the companies that will inevitably make
or break winning the task. Not the best strategy and
especially dangerous if they lose, but their superior product made
this one all a bit inevitable despite some valiant selling
from the girl's sub-team by Leah and Francesca.
I don't think this task was won or lost on superior
pitches or salespeople, I think this was simply down to a
poor product. Unfortunately the girl's had the thankless task
trying to sell large quantities of their product into department or
catalogue stores.
The board room
The boys, having been tantalised X-Factor style by Karen's
boardroom delivery of the results, won by a
huge margin and were understandably ecstatic. In a hugely
dissimilar vein Karen did the opposite to our team last year in the
gym class episode, teased us by telling us that Virgin Active
'hated' our idea but saw sales potential resulting in a
victory.
The relief after countless hours of worrying, sitting
and waiting in reception is phenomenal when you've won
and you just can't get out of the boardroom quick enough.
Back to the girls and regardless of the
sales ability this was lost because of design and product
development. Rightly, Uzma and Sophie are brought back in by
Project Manager Natalie.
Uzma, firstly for claiming she can design, knows about trends
and has an eye for aesthetics - when she clearly doesn't. And
Sophie for not doing much at all really. Once in the firing line
however Uzma does what all good Apprentice candidates do in
this situation and rolls up her sleeves and fights -
which is the opposite to what Sophie does.
Ultimately, Sophie pays the wallpaper price for sitting in the
background and not really doing a lot. This mirrored
the third firing of our series last year when
Michael Cobb saw the chop after three anonymous task
performances.
You could argue that actually in this task Uzma deserved to go
for her failings more than Sophie. However at this stage in
the competition Lord Sugar wants to see more from the candidates
even if it is misplaced, rather than seeing nothing at
all.
Hero of the week:
Francesca MacDuff-Varley - bouncing back from a calamitous
performance last week by actually selling some plastic
cubes on wheels.
Villain of the week:
Zeeshan Shah - has 'next to go' scribbled all over his forehead.
His edit has been far from kind, only highlighting his inability to
back up his big claims.
Tom's been busy since the show finished last year.
He's founder of Cult Wines, check out his business
here.