Table of contents for Tycoon

1. Tycoon: Tom Gone, Elizabeth Next!
2. Tycoon: Were You On The Edge Of Your Seat?
3. Tycoon: No Shock Winner

You may remember from last time that Peter Jones had selected all 4 of the remaining businesses to go forward to the grand finale.

The grand finale looked extremely impressive and again the introductory credits were very like “The Apprentice” in appearance.

And yet…

Tycoon completely failed to impress. Kate Thornton was the compere for the night and did a reasonable job.  Almost all the finalists were dressed in their finery.

The finale set looked nice and big and glittery. Up for the prize was the over £200,000 of profits made by all the companies since Tycoon started.

Then we were treated to half an hour of clips we’d already seen and mini interviews with the people involved, including Peter Jones with amazing stripped socks.

I’d advised closing Justin and Lauren down last week and I had a question over whether Iain’s Helicopter business was sustainable.

The Tycoon Winner

In the end Iain won. Which seemed only fair as he’d made over half of the £200,000 profits available as the prize.

Was The Finale Worth Watching?

I can now give a big unequivocal no!

It was like watching paint dry. Who wanted to hear more of what we’d already heard?

There was no drama. There was no reason that the watching public (if any watched) should change their minds about one person or another.

I’ve never sat through such an insipid production before.

Peter Jones needs to get his production company to come up with a much better format than this.

It was almost as if a group of mates had gone out to the pub after watching The Apprentice and said how great Dragon’s Den was too. Then said, “wait a minute, think how amazing it would be if we combined the two!”

As you know I love business programmes. And my reasons for watching, which may be different to others are as follows:

• To learn about someone else’s business
• To learn how other people approach business problems
• To learn what not to do
• To see how other people think in business
• Combined with a narrative thread that links the programme and the people together

So for me Tycoon failed to deliver any of my reasons for watching

As I’ve said before if Tycoon ever comes back I need to be convinced it’s much, much better than this before I watch another second.

Table of contents for Tycoon

1. Tycoon: Tom Gone, Elizabeth Next!
2. Tycoon: Were You On The Edge Of Your Seat?
3. Tycoon: No Shock Winner

You may remember in the first episode of Tycoon I suggested Tom and Elizabeth should both go.

…and they have.

I have very mixed feelings about this Tycoon series.

On the one hand it should be interesting to see apprentice entrepreneurs (appreneurs) work in their new businesses and start to make money on the other hand at times you’re not sure what on earth they’re competing for.

Take yesterday night’s episode where Peter was going to decide who should go into the final.

Which out of the 4 remaining businesses would get canned?

If you haven’t seen the episode yet, I’ll reveal the answer at the end with the title “So Who Went Through To The Tycoon Finale?”

Suffice to say I was baffled by the criteria that Peter was using to establish exactly which business should go through into the finale.

Can Justin Chieffo Win With A Bag For Life?

Justin almost got an order from Sainsbury’s for 60,00 bags for life and he also managed to find a much cheaper supplier of the bags.

I’m sorry almost an order is no order.

And 60,000 compared to Tesco’s 250,000? Didn’t Justin point out the size of Tesco’s order?

And are Sainsbury’s really the only other supermarket to express an interest in bags for life.

The most strategic and vitally important supermarket of them all was completely ignored – ASDA. After all they’re owned by WALMART – the biggest supermarket in the USA and chain you’d want to get into to sell such a bag!

Justin seemed to be sitting back on his laurels. As an entrepreneur he needs to continually thinking of new ways to get his bags into shops. Plus what about putting ads on the bags?

My Advice: Close Justin down.

Can Iain Morgan Rise Above With His Helicopters?

Iain Morgan became a selling whirlwind and sold an incredible amount of helicopters.

Unfortunately, a good salesman does not mean he’s a good businessman.

That said he had made the most money this week and it was around half the total that everyone else combined made.

My Advice: I’m undecided on Iain because you can see his business will saturate the UK market for toy executive helicopters. What does he do then?

Will Lauren Pope’s Hair Extensions Win The Day?

Lauren continued to sell her hair extensions, despite her extension suppliers labeling the extensions Goosip instead of Gossip!

My Advice: Close Lauren down. I know extensions are currently fashionable my only concern is that a number of celebs appear to have stopped wearing them now. So it may be a declining market.

Helen James and Cathy Caudwell-Todd

Helen and Cathy only made a small amount of money compared to everyone else but have won deals to get into large garden centres with their clothes ranges.

I think the connection with Dragon’s Den will help them too.

My Advice: These two are the ones I would vote for to win. I think that once their excessive prices had been pared down a bit for garden centres they’ve every chance of selling lots of gardening clothes.

Is The Finale Worth Watching?

I really don’t know.

If Helen and Cathy can show large orders, or even sales from the garden centres I think they’ve got it sewn up for the few viewers who’ve stuck with Tycoon.

The criteria Peter appears to be choosing the finalists are unclear. And I suspect the same will be true in the final.

My previous Tycoon posting reveals my thoughts on whether I’d watch another series of Tycoon. Suffice to say that at the moment I’m terribly underwhelmed.

“So Who Went Through To The Tycoon Finale?”

After watching Peter invite Justin and Iain through because of their high sales figures and Lauren for her reasonable one it all looked curtains for Helen and Cathy.

Then Peter decided to let them all through.

So much for being on the edge of my seat with high drama!

Table of contents for Tycoon

1. Tycoon: Tom Gone, Elizabeth Next!
2. Tycoon: Were You On The Edge Of Your Seat?
3. Tycoon: No Shock Winner

After the first episode of Tycoon I pointed out that Tom should be sacked and Elizabeth given enough rope to hang herself.

Although I started watching the second episode I lost the will to live part way through and didn’t watch the rest where Tom got his just desserts.

ITV management pulled the show from its prime time slot and shoehorned a shorter version into a later slot.

Thank goodness.

The editing has got much tighter and it looks as though they’ve inserted a few new clips of Peter’s assessment of what’s happening.

In this episode Justin Chieffo  is appointed by Peter to look after his fellow entrepreneurs as Peter has to go away for a few days.

Elizabeth Gets Hacked

I think it’s important that anyone on these reality shows needs to remember is that “they return to the real world after the show is finished.” Elizabeth wearing a sticky label on her forehead with the word ‘FRAGILE’ on is not going to endear her to future customers or employers.

So what happened to Elizabeth Hackford?

• 4,000 bottle wrappers were the wrong colour
• She was advised by the Portland Group not to use the name Vtox because it was too much like Detox
• She didn’t appear to like Justin “managing” her

Peter finally gave her the elbow.

And can someone please tell me why on earth they’re talking to the doomed candidate on the end of the pier? What is the point?

OK, they’re trying to get away from the boardroom firing scene as shown on The Apprentice. But a pier? Why couldn’t they fire someone from Peter’s Bentley? Or maybe in Peter’s office?

And guess what? Lauren said that it was expected by the others.

Yes she should never have been in the contest!

Has Justin Chieffo Got Management Ability?

Like I said before my wife still believes his carrier bag dispenser is a good idea. So when Tesco ordered 250,000 she looked at me in triumph!

I’m still not persuaded. As I said last time you can use a carrier bag to carry spare carrier bags around in.

Anyway, you can’t argue with an order. It could be Tesco wants to test it out.

Anyway, back to Justin’s management ability…

It was tested to the limit in his dealings with Elizabeth Hackford.

He didn’t help his case by telling her he had to have a meeting with her while she was already having a meeting with Grace, the ex-Big Brother contestant she wanted to use to endorse the drink.

Then he used the weak threat that he would tell Peter about her…

We also saw Justin with his feet up.

When Elizabeth told him he’d embarrassed her and flounced off Justin mimicked her holding a handbag and even said the word “handbags” – not very good for team building with the rest of the troops.

What impressed me most about Justin was that he still had £8,000 of the original £10,000 provided by Peter. Well done!

My Advice: You need people who can run a business. Someone who doesn’t understand when to make a stand or not with an employee just can’t at the moment.

If Justin doesn’t get any further sales close him down next.

Iain Morgan

Iain Morgan is now demonstrating and selling his executive helicopter. It looks like fun but I wonder exactly how many he can sell.

Apparently he’s going to try and get a large order from Argos next time.

My Advice: Iain still seems to know what he’s doing from the ordering point of view. My only thought is the quality of the helicopter.

He does need to start selling volumes of the helicopters. A 20 helicopter order requires the same selling time as 2,000. So he would be better off with Argos or an upmarket executive gifts catalogue.

Lauren Pope

Lauren Pope met up with Philip Green at Top Shop. Of course Philip was involved in a meeting that would normally be beneath his notice.

Philip wanted Lauren to sell from his shop without him investing in anything. That would have meant a lot of work for Lauren and she was right to turn it down.

She did well to get an order for £47,000 from an online company in Leicestershire.

My Advice: Keep up the good work! And also do some promotions too.

Helen James and Cathy Caudwell-Todd

Helen and Cathy met up with Harrods Owner Al-Fayed and pitched to have their range sold in Harrods and to have their launch there too.

They successfully persuaded him and Peter Jones was ecstatic when they told him.

My Advice: I think these two could do well still getting their product into Harrods needs to be done as soon as possible to get the maximum exposure whilst Tycoon is still running.

Is It Worth Watching Now?

I am watching again but…

• there needs to be more footage of the appreneurs (apprentice entrepreneurs) working with their suppliers and customers and not simply sitting down at their PCs – it’s just boring otherwise
• The Dragon’s Den type investment decision meeting needs to be scrapped completely and the figures assigned for further investment provided to each person
• Peter is (presumably) trying to pass on the skills he learnt as he rose to the top. So we need to see more coaching rather than focusing on his investment
• They need to fire early when it’s obvious one of the candidates isn’t going to make it
• Hire a voice-over who sounds interesting and interested in what’s happening

As there’s not much longer to go with this series I will continue to watch but I’d be wary about watching a second series, unless the suggestions I’ve made were implemented.

Otherwise I’d rather watch paint dry. Oh no, Big Brother’s already done that one!

The show is very Apprentice like: pictures of smart suited men in Bentley’s, images of London and quick cutting between sweating “apprentice entrepreneurs” maybe we should call them “appreneurs”?

The appreneurs seemed to have thought they’d already won the competition by getting into the final 10 companies. Certainly that was the initial smug expression the competitors wore when they started the program. By the end of the first 2 weeks they looked distinctly more frazzled as Peter Jones looked worriedly at them and asked slightly searching questions in a Dragon’s Den like meeting at the end of two weeks so he could decide which companies to invest a further £20,000 in.

So far it’s a bit like The Apprentice and a bit like Dragon’s Den…

So here’s my twopence:

Tom Thurlow

Tom Thurlow seems to have taken a leaf from Richard Branson’s book by starting a student’s newspaper. Tom’s vision was that the newspaper would be free to the customer and paid for by adverts. He managed to impress initially by calling the newspaper “Snap.”

What he knew but didn’t tell Peter Jones were:

• Piers Morgan, probably the most famous news editor known, was starting a paid for newspaper for kids
• Tom’s printer wasn’t getting a newspaper mock-up to show when he’d expected

Also the newspaper turned out to be a folded A3 flimsy piece of paper which looked to be uninteresting. And yet Tom claimed to be proud of it.

My Advice: Don’t invest any more money in Tom and sack him because he obviously doesn’t understand business yet.

Elizabeth Hackford

Elizabeth Hackford decided to go down the Innocent fruit drinks route but with a dash of Vodka in hers. So isn’t that an alcopop?

Peter Jones wielded a bottle of drink that was exactly like hers. She claimed hers wasn’t from concentrate, the one Peter had said “not from concentrate.” So nil points for market research.

Peter advised her to come up with a great name to get attention for the drink – rather like “Death” as a name for cigarettes. So she came up with some really pedestrian names and after talking further with Peter decided on something that wouldn’t sound too good in a bar, you know, “could I have a Fruka please?”

I noticed that she’s got an equally insane name now on her web site: VTox. If you’re an extreme sports junkie (like Elizabeth) and you know mountaineering terminology you could translate VTOX when ordering a drink as “can I have a Very TOXic drink?”

There’s nothing wrong with a me-too product but there has to be something interesting about it – as Peter says – a good name.

All in all I was under impressed with Elizabeth “make it happen” Hackford. Particularly when she tearfully exclaimed that she would move mountains for Peter.

My Advice: Rename the drink, something like “Mule Kick.” Also give her some more rope to hang herself with next week.

Iain Morgan

Iain Morgan actually seemed reasonably clear as to what he was doing: importing and selling radio-controlled toy helicopters.

Other than a few brief glances that’s all we say of Iain until presentation time to bid for money from Peter to go forward.

So he produced a presentation that showed exactly why he needed every last penny of the £20,000 Peter Jones had to invest this week.

And of course he got it, because without further investment to import the helicopters he’d have nothing to sell!

My Advice: Seems to know what he’s doing from the ordering point of view. My only thought is the quality of the helicopter.

Lauren Pope

Lauren Pope was producing “thicker, longer” hair extensions. To me they looked like nicely packaged hair extensions. I don’t claim to be an expert in the product though. Peter thought that they would go well in Top Shop. Great…

Lauren wanted to go to China (I think) to investigate sources of hair for the extensions. She was disappointed when Iain won all Peter’s investment money.

Again Lauren didn’t really feature too much in this episode.

My Advice: Use the phone and ask for samples from a select few suppliers!

Justin Chieffo

Justin Chieffo is producing an environmentally friendly carrier bag dispenser. My wife immediately said, “that would be really useful.” My thought was – isn’t it just a carrier bag stuffed with more carrier bags?

Still it’s certainly an interesting idea. It should mesh well with “bags for life”.

That said I noticed that local Sainsbury’s had a day when you could take as many “bags for life” as you liked. All the bags went and Sainsbury’s didn’t need anymore old throw-away bags? Well certainly all the “bags for life” went but I’ve not actually seen anyone using one. Even I have two in my car and haven’t actually remembered to take them out to re-use.

So an interesting concept and one that all us environmentally concerned people are interested in…but we don’t often do as we say do we?

That said whenever Justin is talked at by Peter Jones he gets very tense, anxious and looked incredibly worried. Rather like a tailor who’s made the Emperor’s new clothes and doesn’t want to get found out.

He also tried to go for £15,000 investment for no other reason than to get rid of Ian. What a stupid thing to do when you consider the winner gets the profits of everyone else! So he’s trying to cut his profits by getting rid of one company!

My Advice: Really hit all the supermarkets with the concept. But first actually target a few stores and ask if you can try it out there. Then present the results to the supermarkets. If the idea is going to work the supermarkets have the biggest vested interest (reduced costs) in getting it going. Then if the supermarkets show no interest bin the idea.

Helen James and Cathy Caudwell-Todd

Helen James and Cathy Caudwell-Todd had come up with a fun name for a range of gardening garments aimed at women. A good idea but one that was only hitting part of a big market. So Peter Jones suggested that they rename their range so they could take in men and kids gardening garments. The pair were most put out but on mature reflection realised Peter had a point and renamed the clothes SOD for men and SOD for women. They also paid a fair bit for some well produced polo shirts that looked fairly classy.

In fact they then went on to sell over a £1,000 worth of clothes from their web site in the week. The winner so far!

Peter had a lot of praise for them, particularly as they’d taken onboard what he’d said and made money too.

My Advice: These two are ones to keep. They’re doing well we just need to see that they can capitalise on their early lead without having to pay for advertising and I can think of lots of different ways you could get PR for fashionable gardening clothes.

Is It Worth Watching?

I found the opening episode interesting.

My main concern is that Peter Jones is not great as a “balls of steel” entrepreneur’s presenter. Maybe he’ll grow on me but at the moment I believe he should have sacked Tom and didn’t and going on what Elizabeth thought was OK with a name given her more of a hard time.

The other concern I have is that you didn’t see any interaction with the businesses customers or suppliers.

Still it is week one, so like Tom and Elizabeth I’ll see what happens next week.