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John McGurk's blog

Apprentice 2012 - Episode 11: Chocolate Heaven Makes Business Mess and Well-groomed Plodders Shine

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Adam headed up the other team and used his charm and selling prowess but unfortunately none of them thought about the business model. They had lots of great ideas, chocolate lollipops turning into delish hot chocolate, drunken jellies, lovely sweet caramel choc discs. If you are salivating apologies.

The problem is whilst they were salivating at their concept, (they had a great store front, delighted customers and a good name "sweet thing"), they had very little in the way of execution.
 
They had no clue about pricing a repeat of Jade and Nick's disaster with Marcus Wareing last week. Their market positing was all over the place. Selling sweets for £2.99 with no idea that "penny off" pricing is anathema in luxury retailing for example. Not only that the range of pricing was just guessed at.  They met a top chocolatier and snaffled his produce but didn't ask as genuinely curious entrepreneur would; How do you make this work?. A fact which Karen Brady pointed out straight away.

Meanwhile Wricky and Tom introduced the idea of the heritage grooming concept complete with traditional wet shaves. They showed their mettle however when asked what the ratio of wet shave revenue would be to grooming product sales. They both knew because they had thought about it. They left nothing to chance. Their presentation pitch to the potential buyers was workman-like but they obviously knew their stuff.

Adam's pitch on behalf of phoenix went all wrong. He faltered and fumbled for words. Jade would probably have done better but would have been flummoxed by questions around pricing and brand positioning. In reality Phoenix had sugar rush of creativity and got bored with the business basics, whilst sterling got bored with the creative process but drilled the business model to work for them. If Nick had come out from behind his hair and questioned the lack of business model with SPECIFICS, not just the "no strategy", mantra he would have averted the car crash.

Given that one of his businesses is selling ethical coffee he might have come forward a luxury hot choc emporium and spin off retail lines, but no.

In reality Nick should have pitched given that fact that Adam's accent and diction might have grated with some of the posh potential buyers. Nick is certainly benefiting from his cut glass accent and poise but he was genuinely clueless on several occasions. Anyway Adam was sent off to tend his peppers to property empire having given us all a great laugh and what we are left with looks like a two horse race.

That said Jade had all the ideas and has been consistently underestimated especially by me. That said, I think both her Tom and Nick will be found out by the Claude and the gang. So for me it's Wricky Martin to pick up the quarter million and start living the Vida loca! Can't wait till Sundays final.

Plodders
Wricky and Tom with their dull packaging and the idea of putting it in a  "nice box" but they still won!

Performers
Wricky the Sweeny Todd of heritage shaving and a very scared bald man in goatee and snazzy specs.

Please Stop
Any one saying "no strategy" without naming specifics.

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