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The Apprentice - Sport Relief Does Charity Shops

By jimsym on Mar 13, 2008 in Sir Alan Sugar, The Apprentice

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The Apprentice roared back to our screens to help charity in the form of Sport Relief this week.

The task this time was for each team to operate a pop-up shop next door to each other. Pop-up shops are empty shops that are rented by an entrepreneur, filled with goods which are then sold and when all goods have gone, or rental expires, the shop closes.

The aim was to have an all ticket event where the aim was to make the maximum amount of money for the Sport Relief charity.

The Boys Team

The boys wasted hours choosing a team leader. Eventually picking Hardeep who after a self-professed 45 minutes in the job relinquished it to Lembit Opik. Sir Alan had felt sure that Kelvin would have gone for the job, but as Kelvin himself said he didn’t think his management style would have got done what was needed.

Considering the boys were all reasonably successful and/or well known they had significant difficult getting people to donate stuff for them to sell in their shop. They also appeared to have problems getting people to attend. At one point Lembit was reduced to making tickets prices £25 and asked someone to hawk them around Westminster (avoiding the obvious idiots).

Now that was a stupid thing to do. The point was to make money for charity. Which means getting people to buy stuff from their shop. Making the tickets so cheap could have had people going who just weren’t into spending a thousand pounds on an ostrich feather fan, as Little Britain star David Walliums did in the girls shop.

Lembit and Hardeep went in to negotiate with the girls on the celeb they wanted for their shop and to try and make sure they got cartoonist Gerald Scarfe for their shop. Unhappily neither of them appeared to know how to negotiate and Lembit retreated in confusion, including losing their way back to their suite.

Phil Tufnell made a major point of Lembit coming back without anything and Kelvin managed to lower the temperature a little and the two negotiators returned to the fray. And the girls ended up getting exactly who they wanted - including Gerald Scarfe.

Hardeep supervised the shop fitting - and made it look a little like an art gallery with empty frames behind which they hung the goods.

The boys shop name was Buy One Get One Free - which was silly because if the aim was to make as much money as possible for charity why would they be giving stuff away. People were paying silly money for items purely because it was for charity. I’m sure the thought of getting something else free never entered their heads.

Also Hardeep (who I think came up with buy one get one free silliness) also decided that people bought more if they had something to eat for free. Then decided to provide oysters, which some people(including him) love and others hate! Think of the charity profits going down people’s gullets! And when Sir Alan was told they were free he grunted, “Smucks.”

Phil Tufnell was a laugh as he sneaked outside to grab Barry McGuigan’s autograph, even though Barry was the girls celeb for the night!

The boys hadn’t sold all their tickets and were giving away part of their stock for free and were providing free food. So the amount of money going to charity was trickling away. Luckily they’d been given Tamara Beckwith to act as their route into getting lots of other people to come and she brought dad Bernie Ecclestone who doubled the amount the boys sold.

The Girls Team

The girls decided on Jacqueline Gold as the leader immediately. That made a huge amount of sense, I mean she has a retail empire and understands retail, presentation and profit in a way none of the boys seemed to.

The girls got on with blagging, or scrounging, things to sell in the shop they agreed should be called “Sugar and Spicy.” Jacqueline Gold got Harrods to cough up what the boys believed was about £30,000 of goods for the shop. And Louise was a revelation. She was great at getting her friends to pay extortionate amounts of money to attend the opening (and closing) night of the shop.

Max Clifford was their PR helper and managed to get a fantastic item for their shop: 2 tickets to the US finale of American Idol from Simon Cowell.

There was a slight problem between Jacqueline and Kirsty. Kirsty thought that Jacqueline wasn’t trusting her team enough and it all came to a head when they were deciding who to ring and Jacqueline decided she’d be better to ring Sir Richard Branson than Kirsty.

The team, with Jacqueline’s experience, fitted the shop to look like a very stylish boutique and managed to sell a everything.

The Reckoning

The girls team won by quite a margin and were congratulated by Sir Alan for the way they’d worked so well together and had gelled well too. The boys hadn’t gelled in the same way and Kelvin was fairly cutting about Hardeep’s ability as a team leader. There seemed no doubt that the boys were struggling in the whole enterprise and I think part of that was due to Lembit. He wanted to control what the team agreed but he didn’t really take control of the team. He needed to take control in a more organised way, as Jacqueline had for the girls.

And on Friday the boys team get a further inquisition to find out why they didn’t perform as well as the girls and then someone gets fired!

So who do I think should be fired?

It’s a difficult decision. On the one hand you’ve Hardeep who had a very strange idea of how to lead people and on the other Lembit who’s team seemed unable to harvest the contacts they all had for high priced tickets. Plus Lembit’s way of asking for goods was rather like when a shop assistant asks, “can I help you?” Which invites an automatic no.

Also you’ve Kelvin who I think would have made a much better team leader than either Hardeep or Lembit and simply sat back and let the boys muddle along.

The girls seemed to aspire to get much more money for each item from their assembled throng. Lembit was reduced to asking a little 3 or 4 year boy to buy a toy.

Phil, Nick and Kelvin seemed to enjoy the selling aspect of the task and did reasonably, although as a team they just didn’t seem to want to charge enough money for the charity.

Overall, I think Lembit’s inability to negotiate his way out of a paperbag could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Sir Alan… So my money is on Lembit to be fired. However, the boardroom tussle might change that - let’s see on Friday.

LiveJournal tags: The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar, Sport Relief, Clare Balding, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Jacqueline Gold, Kelvin Mackenzie, Kirstie Allsopp, Lembit Opik, Lisa Snowdon, Louise Redknapp, Nick Hancock, Phil Tufnell