Junior Apprentice Goes To Amsterdam

The junior apprentices excitedly descend upon Amsterdam in their latest task: the choice of products to pitch to companies back in the UK.

The apprentices get to see 6 Amsterdam designers and choose the two designers products they want to pitch to 2 companies chosen by Lord Sugar.

The teams both make their choice of products and unfortunately they both choose the city bikes as one of the products they want to pitch. Then ensues an extended negotiation which ends with Instinct in the form of Kirsty (project manager) and Tim getting the bikes and the doggy products, a doggy stroller and upmarket doggy bed.

Arun as project manager with Revolution get the comforters, cutlery and lights. Which you may note are all relatively low value items. That means high sales volume is needed to win the task.

Note that the bikes and doggy products are all high value items – which usually is a high risk/high reward strategy.

Pitching to the chosen buyers

Lord Sugar sets up 2 appointments for each team and both teams needed to make further appointments for more pitches. The appointments are with top stores House of Fraser and Libertys.

Arjun asks Zoe to do the pitch. Which she accepts reluctantly. There seems to be a fair amount of back-biting about project manager Arjun by Zoe and Emma, which continues later in the boardroom.

House of Fraser is the first one that Zoe pitches the comforter and mood lights to. The buyers suggest that the cost prices are too high. The team hadn’t thought to ask the designers for price breaks and whether they had any negotiation room. Plus given the hard time Emma and Zoe gave the designers it was unlikely they’d have budged on price anyway.

Arjun takes over the pitch and does the one to Libertys where the buyers seem quite interested in the comforter.

Meanwhile Tim and Kirsty present to Libertys first and Tim is given the poison chalice of pitching. The buyers like the doggy bed. The pitch to Libertys does not go at well.

Getting More Sales

Initially project manager Kirsty struggles to find doggy product buyers.  Although she does manages to sell some of the doggy beds and doggy strollers in very small amounts as the day progresses.

Arjun seems to be able to rattle up the sales of his products, as do Zoe and Emma. Mind you they are a lot less expensive to buy than the products sold by Tim and Kirsty. In the end Tim manages to sell 6 bikes after all day of finding no buyers for them.

Junior Apprentices Clever Clogs Head Back To The boardroom

Emma and Zoe put the clog in with Arjun as project manager. Lord Sugar points out that Revolution hadn’t asked for price breaks. Which meant they had mouths flapping when asked questions about prices.

Lord Sugar points out to Kirsty that she and Tim were really railroaded into choosing the high value products. Kirsty pointed out that they’d really wanted the bikes because, yes, they were going for the high risk, yet high reward strategy.

And so to the result. As usual it was drawn out and then suddenly the final sales figure of more than £39,000 in sales was announced for Kirsty and Tim (Instinct) completely blowing Arjun’s team out of the water. In fact as Lord Sugar said it was probably the best amount of sales they’d ever had in the boardroom.

Revolution Gets The Firing Finger

So Lord Sugar smiles benignly on Kirsty and Tim and they go back to the house. After much passing of blame by Emma in particular and also by Zoe onto Arjun Lord Sugar summarises:  Emma shirks responsibility for task success and shifts blame to anyone handy. Zoe on the other hand is very much of the “do it my way or it’s the highway” school of team membership. Arjun has been caught been a rock and a hard place with the two of them.

Arjun is told that he will make the final, I think over the last 5 weeks he’s shown he deserves to be there.

Finally Emma is told that whilst she is qualified and Lord Sugar is convinced she’ll do very well she’s fired.

That leaves Zoe as the last one for the final. And by the way that ridiculous red lipstick is really annoying me, so she has to go.

Was The Firing Right?

I’d wanted Emma to go for some time as I felt that she’d said a lot but hadn’t really appeared to contribute to the tasks. And certainly as she became more visible as the number of contestants reduced it was clear that she wasn’t acting as a good team player and not really contributing in the best way.

The fact that she treated the designers like idiots and was quite rude to them spoke volumes as to her currently developed social skills. Although I’m quite confident she’ll be much better as she matures. At the moment it’s a large mark against her.

So Lord Sugar was quite right to fire Emma.

The task really showed the ability of the teams to research the background and marketing for each of their products. Tim in particular seemed to have the right figures at his fingertips. It also exposed any inadequacies in the presentation areas for the people pitching, in particular lack of research to see whether the company would be a good fit for their products – obviously a “must” in the real world.