So it’s Kirsty’s turn to answer the call from Lord Sugar’s office. Wow she is small. The stand that the phone is on was almost at head height! Amazing. Anyway, we’re going to Amsterdam. Woot. My love of Zoe disappeared in one sharp shriek. How can she be so loud so early? Clearly excited by flying she transformed into one of the Sirens. I was not lured.
Because of the destination Tim ponders “what to wear…most classiest most European suit I’ve got”. I’m guessing he hasn’t been to Amsterdam. When I was there all I saw was naked ladies in windows and a woman run out of Macdonalds and be sick in the middle of the pavement. In Tim’s defence, the vomiting lady was wearing a Chanel dress and the working girl was wearing French knickers (European again you see). Wiser than he looks ey? Actually he’s not. He went onto impersonate a Dutch person speaking. Who was his example? Obviously it has to be that weird dutch-man-thing in Austin Powers who eats his own skin. “Shmoke an’ a pancake?”. Tim. *Sigh*
The Junior Apprentice turned briefly into some mad kitchen cleaner advert. “Check-in…Flight…Amsterdam”. The voice-over guy watched too many Cillit Bang adverts. He shouted these words at us, I was half expecting him to shout “BOSH” at the end. What are they doing in Amsterdam I hear you ask? Good question. Knowing Lord Sugar as well as I do now, the location no doubt has nothing to do with the task.
Lies! They have to sell Dutch designers’ products in England. So relevant sort of. Lord Sugar set up meetings with House of Fraser and Liberty but the teams had to source other customers. About the teams, they were Tim and Kirsty, with Special K taking charge of Instinct vs. Zoe, Emma, and Arjun as the bossman of Revolution. 3 against 2 I hear you cry? This is not fair! Lord Sugar couldn’t figure out a solution for that problem. My personal solution would have been to kick Tim off for being annoying at the start of the episode, better yet, the series.
The teams are introduced to 6 designers and had to choose 2. Instinct did well here. Tim was asking some very intelligent questions about stock, pricing, and production. The kinds of things you need to know when you then go broker with a retailer. They seemed to enjoy seeing the ideas that some of the people had (not sure about the human hair hats, couldn’t work out if that was a joke!). Tim even made the sensible suggestion on these bikes by one designer that they won’t fit in either of the retailers Lord Sugar had set up. I hate to admit it, but Tim was impressive. Yuck. Not for long! Yay! They ended up choosing the bikes, obviously, personal cutlery sets and ‘mood’ lamps. Why did they pick the bikes after saying they wouldn’t fit in the stores? Who knows. Doesn’t matter to me. I am happy again.
Revolution on the other hand treated the designers like enemies. Zoe and Emma seemed to gang up on the poor people and almost mock their ideas. During one of their sessions grilling the cutlery lady, Emma even asked “as someone who designs the product, surely you should know what the function of the product is?”. The designer was baffled. “Sorry?” she replied. Way to go Emma. Build that relationship up. Miss Cutlery looooves you now. They went on to choose these rags for children and the bikes for Evans Cycles, sorry, House of Fraser.
Uh oh, you see what I see? They both want the bikes, no idea why. They were almost as bad as the human hair hats. I feel I should describe one for the uninitiated. It was a bike, a normal bike, but instead of pedals it had cross-trainer foot holsters. Pushing your legs up and down made the bike go forward, like a cross-trainer…or like a bike. Unlike last week, it was not up to the suppliers to pick which team to work with, if that was the case the answer would definitely have been Kirsty and Tim. Instead they had to negotiate. Imagine that, a bunch of egocentric brats negotiating. Genius. Kirsty turned into some kind of Godfather figure proclaiming she would not give in. They would not relinquish the bikes. Well guess what, they didn’t. But it was very confusing. They offered the bikes in return for 50% of whatever profit Revolution made on them. Arjun was left unimpressed, “nah I’m not feelin’ that”. Didn’t know he was such a bad ass either. Somehow it ended up that Tim and Kirsty got the bikes and these dog carriers on wheels with matching dog basket. Aren’t they lucky. Two expensive products to sell. Emma, Arjun, and Zoe had to sell the cutlery stuff and the ragdolls. Two cheap products to sell. Hard to work out who came off worst. Oh well.
Negotiating done, the teams went off to the retailers to see if they could sell them. Instinct killed this! The ragdoll things? Well one buyer commented “it looks like a dishcloth”. Correct. They really did. In Liberty they were fumbling around pulling their products out of a plastic bag. Very professional. Will fit in nicely in Liberty then. I heard it’s like Poundland. Not. When Arjun was asked about the products he just didn’t know the answers. He would add at the end of each reply “as far as I know”.
LESSON NO.9!
Know your product like you know your mother…
Revolution were interesting too. Firstly Tim pronounced the name of the bike company wrong. “you’ve gotta get the brand name right haven’t you?” said Nick. Not a good start. When they were introducing the dog carrier to Liberty Tim proclaimed it was the ‘leading brand in the dog stroller…sector’. No kidding. I’ve never seen anything like it before. He went on to say you could “put your kids in it” (I was hoping for a demo of this). He could have put Kirsty in it and wheeled her about. In House of Fraser, who don’t have an exercise wing apparently, he was asked (about the bikes) “where do the bikes fit into our store?. Tim’s response? “They don’t”. What a salesman. I liked that he and Kirsty recognised when it had gone badly. Instinct just rambled about how well it had gone each time.
After the stores the teams wandered around London trying to make extra sales. Tim was mildly successful selling 7 bikes to a bike shop. A few ragdolls were sold here, a few candles there. Nothing to get too excited about. No one wowed me with their initiative. More like children not knowing what to do without being told. Shocking.
Results time again! Revolution didn’t do badly. They managed to sell £10,171 of their products. That was probably quite a lot considering the low cost of the products they ‘chose’. But Instinct….wait for it….good god oh mighty….I can hardly believe me ears….you won’t be able to believe your eyes…unless you saw the show in which case you know…Instinct sold £39,785 worth of goodies. Wow. That’s mad. Lord Sugar could barely hide his delight at this. Tim and Kirsty really did well this time. Well done them. Very well done.
Back to the boardroom for Emma, Zoe, and Arjun. This was a depressing one for me. I was genuinely sad. It was obvious Emma was going to go. Poor girl knew it too. Her face was so sad. It made me sad. I am human after all. Even Lord Sugar said in the kindest of ways “take your time”. She tried to plead with him. Nothing. Like a person who had just been broken up with pleading for one last chance. Humph. In the end, she just didn’t get involved enough. She was too quick to blame, and too slow to act. So, “with a heavy heart” Emma was fired. I’m going to find Emma and give her a big cuddle.
LT
Tags: alan sugar, apprentice, Austin Powers, blog, bright ideas, Bright Ideas Trust, Chanel, emma, entrepreneur, house of fraser, junior, Junior Apprentice, liberty, lord sugar, sir sugar, The Apprentice, Tim Campbell, young, zoe, zoe plummer
