Hey everyone,
The Apprentice is back and there are another 18 candidates who are looking to become Lord Sugar's next business partner. During the introductions we were able to get a short insight into some of them and what they are hoping to bring to the table. With a mixture of different business owners in sweets, finance, technology, sales and martial arts, it's a varied group - with a Kim Kardashian wannabe, the man who thinks he has everything to win the show (including his looks), and somebody who thinks that you shouldn't waste time, you should 'get wasted'.
Lord Sugar was able to speak to all 18 hopefuls at once, introducing them all and pointing out some of the good and bad aspects of them all, before giving them all the first task which involved all of them to go to Antigua and promotional a tour for visitors on the Caribbean Island. For a first task it was a very special and unexpected location for the first task, but it's one way to start the new show off with a bang! It was the boys vs the girls and they had to initially decide who the Project Managers were going to be, initiate prices and work out what sort of tour they wanted to go for.
From the boys team, nobody put themselves forward apart from Tom, who became the first PM for the boys, admitting that he is a travel guide in South Africa. His idea was to go for a history tour with ticket prices of around $150 and potentially being able to bring the price down to $100 if people were not wanting to spend as much money. Some of the team including Reece and Bradley said that the pricing strategy might not necessarily work, with Bradley adding that Joe was the PM so it was his decision to make. I think at this stage in the programme, the only guy I had confidence in was probably Joe...purely because he was the only one to step forward as PM and he had previous experience in this particular field. On the girls team, Victoria whose jobs include working on an airline and being an online sweet business owner stepped up to the challenge of being the PM for the girls team, with all of the girls backing her. In terms of the style of tour, she wanted to have an inclusive tour which had entertainment such as dancing, pottery and a way to sell luxury items at the end in order to bring in extra money. She said that it would be a good idea for them to go and try to sell their tickets at the beach, with Emma, Shazia and others saying that they should go elsewhere as they personally wouldn't want to talk to someone about tickets for a tour when they've just spend money on a holiday.
Some of the boys had disagreements when it came to prices and also commission, with Mark undercutting Simba's potential ticket sale as they were running out of time, but Simba also undercutting Sohail's commission of the beer when getting that as their item. However, the boys did manage to sell all of their tickets, and the girls only sold 12/16. Throughout the boys tour, they didn't seem to be very knowledgeable about what they were speaking about, with Sohail stating that they should 'look at the signs' and Joe unable to give some of the guests facts about the cannons and the types of armoury or weapons that the city was known for. Gregory managed to save the tour as he had recited all of the information the previous day and was able to give facts about some of the interesting things that he had read, and also went on to further talk about how some people who lived on the island were also allergic to wool. For the girls, Megan managed to successfully get a commission on a variety of ceramic products (from a 35% commission rate which they asked for, to only 3%). I think it was a difficult deal to accept, but after Marnie the sub team leader 'instructed' her to go in at 35%, it was the best that they were going to get. For the girls tour, Rochelle taught their guests some new moves on the boat whilst looking out over the horizons, and it was Dani who took a lead for the pottery class where everyone was able to decorate different animals in order to win a prize.
When it came down to the boardroom figures, the boys had spent $1,200 and made a profit of $989, whilst the girls only spent $950, but their profit being slightly lower, at $487.50. PM for the girls Victoria decided to bring back Emma and Marnie, due to Emma being one of the girls to disrupt the task by constantly moaning about selling tickets at the beach, and Marnie being the sub team leader who was unable to take control of her little team. In the end, Lord Sugar said that he doesn't like people who disrupt tasks and don't really listen to anybody else in the team, so it was Emma that was fired - with Victoria and Marnie having a strike next to their name for the tasks going forward.
I think both of the tours were quite good, but I think all of these tasks involve good communication, sales techniques, consideration for other people's opinions but also collaboration between the people in the team. Some of the strong candidates so far include Gregory and Tom from the boys, just because of how much they got involved with the task. I also like Mark as he seems quite cool and collected so he might be a dark horse in the competition. From the girls, I think Victoria and Marnie are stand outs, purely because they are both quite vocal, Megan also wasn't afraid of putting herself in the deep end with the first deal that she was part of, but there's also some of the candidates including Denisha, Kevin and Shannon for example who haven't really given much to the first task, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the next episode.
Click here for my video review
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