The Apprentice - Episode 3

This episode began with the disturbing image of one of the male candidates blowdrying his armpit, probably to counter Sarah's previous comments about the girls putting on slap and heels to sell; business grooming applies to chaps too, don't you know!

Team Tenacity kept their name this week although it sounds like an incontinence pad to me. But the teams were mixed up with Roisin, the accountant leading Summit and Katie taking on Tenacity. Their mission was to create a home fragrance product and make the most profit so we were repeatedly reminded - it's all about the margins! Having watched previous challenges, I was expecting it to be all about how the apprentices fail to measure ingredients correctly which wasn't far wrong.

Roisin managed the team strongly when it came to product creation and brand design coming up with a credible high quality product called Beach Dreams; it looked worthy of a high price tag. Katie made the first market research blunder of the series by calling one brief chat with one lady in a shop robust research and then proceeding to ignore the findings anyway. British Breeze was therefore created in a fabric conditioner yellow with paraffin wax instead of a no colour, soy wax candle as suggested by the candle shop lady.

When it came to selling, the whole task fell apart for Team Summit. A variable approach to margins meant the average selling price was £9.50 and some market trading offers made it look like it came out of Del Boy's suitcase. James had an interesting approach to misleading sales practice labelling it as previously sold at £45. Although the team managed to sell in volume to business clients, they sold out of reed diffusers at a low price and failed to deliver on a more lucrative order to a high quality hotel. Team Tenacity stuck to their guns and focused on selling at a higher margin. They didn't sell out of candles but still managed to win the task with £1,584 profit to Summit's £1,569 which as Roisin pointed out was the price of one candle...

Roisin's team in the boardroom was quickly depleted as Lindsay fell on her sword and admitted she had done little to help the team and was out of her depth - she was quickly fired and made her way back to her swimming pool, her natural business habitat. Roisin still had to return to the boardroom with two further members of her team and Nurun was the second candidate to go as she lacked experience and failed to add up or sell much at all.

So what did we learn? The apprentices are mostly rubbish at maths and have no idea how to set a pricing strategy and stick to it, or listen to what their team leader tells them to do and their market research is pretty ropey too. Steve is proving to be a liability when it comes to sales negotiations and Sarah, an unpopular member of the team who is playing the blame game and failing to sell at the right price. Sarah and Steve are predicted to be the next candidates to leave the boardroom. At least Lord Sugar's approach to firing in bulk is clearing the decks so we may be done before Christmas!