Strategy strategy!

OK so today's post is about the latest episode of The Apprentice's eight series, episode 7, which this time saw the two teams being given the task of trying to sell items worth £150 at a profit in the Essex area.

So team Sterling, lead by Nick (the young guy posh lad with the Justin Bieber hairdo) opted to go for cosmetic products such as fake tan, whereas team Phoenix had a variety of different products, which made it difficult for them to find a market strategy (this word will feature heavily here!) and a product they favoured to sell the most.  Team Sterling however sold their fake tan really well, but after a while they ran out of stock, which had to be replenished, which cost alot of time.  This was further not helped by the fact that Ricky and Stephen were stuck in heavy traffic while trying to get to the wholesalers to pick up more stock, but they also had some spare stock left in their van, which they could have dropped off at the shopping mall, where the rest of team Phoenix by this time had nothing left to sell.  In team Phoenix, Jade made the mistake of not identifying the best selling product which was the toy insects, and she said just to re-buy all the items, which meant they ended up having stock leftover which they didn't sell by the end of the day.

In the boardroom however it was revealed that both teams final results were fairly close, with team Sterling coming out the better of two, as they had total assets of £955, whereas team Phoenix only had £838.21.  In team Phoenix, the team leader Jade, brought Azhar and Tom back into the boardroom, with her, in hindsight Jade admitted that she had made a mistake bringing Tom back in with her, as Tom proved to be a great help in the task to her, and Tom deserves credit for remaining diplomatic and for not taking Jade's choice personally.  It was also clear that Jade lost control of the task and as Azhar was correct to point out, many times throughout the task, that Jade did not have a clear strategy of which items to sell, and yes he did say strategy quite a bit!  But Jade also wasn't keen on Azhar as she felt he was constantly nagging her and was more of a hindrance than a help, as he made no suggestions on how to improve things.  Jade really was in the firing line as being the team leader she did lose her way in the task, but when it came to her defence of why she shouldn't be fired, she put up a good case to Lord Sugar.  Azhar however wasn't so fortunate as Lord Sugar identified that while he pointed out which things were going wrong or didn't work, he offered no solutions, and also because of his negative attitude and lack of involvement, so he had to go. 

In all fairness I think Lord Sugar did make the right decision, although if you watch his reasons for why he fired Azhar on The Apprentice: You're Fired, he was a bit harsh in his assessment, as he said that Azhar was someone no one listened to because of his attitude and no one respected.  But Azhar did have a fairly negative attitude and he was too quick to point out when things did go wrong, he also most of the time appeared very dour faced and morose on camera.  The only time you really saw a different side to his character was when he did the cheesy 1980s workout video, The Groove Train, a few episodes back.  But of course on The Apprentice: You're Fired, he did come across as quite a likeable guy, as most of them do, and he also was quite self deprecating, and pointing out how he kept saying the "strategy" all the time in the episode!  And also on the other hand, Azhar at times probably did make sense in what he said but in the end no one was prepared to listen to him, which was a bit unfair. 

But again in the boardroom its more about stating your case as to why you shouldn't be fired that tends to get you through rather than trying to state your case about how you did on the task, its 60% the boardroom, 40% the task.  And that is something Jade was better at than Azhar, but I have to say I'm not that keen on Jade and her attitude, especially the way she didn't even have the decency to shake Azhar's hand when she left, she walked right past him and took her suitcase.  That's a really poor show, even if they didn't get on, its still not much of an excuse, but it does happen on the show now and then, and has in the past.     

Sooooo that's seven weeks over, next week the teams turn to trying to sell fine art (or probably not so fine).  Should be fun.

Till then that's it for The Apprentice for now.