The Apprentice 2016 thread

[4KSuited]

Claude is a God

[Cf]

So what exactly is Courtney's plan again?

Seems the best strat on this show is just to take in an existing business which is doing well and ask for investment in it rather than a new business idea.

If you didn't see the announcement - final is on Sunday.
Regards

C

[cambridgealex]

Interview episode is just amazing television every year. Claude is just...too much <3.

Thought Frances performed the best in the interviews and in the boardroom and has been robbed of a place in the final.

Courtney probs has best plan and most exciting for Shugs. Only explanation for how someone that dull and weak has made it to the final.

Grainne seemed to just get written off because Sugar wasn't interested in a makeup business "You're gonna sell makeup??? As a business?? Nah not for me that darling"

Alana...just no words, how has she done this...
 

[Rupert]

Grainne got written off because she doesn't have the professional qualifications in the field she wants to teach people in and seemingly doesn't even know much about makeup except how to put it on people.

Courtney's plan is absolutely terrible. I or anyone could go into his shop on the day of a product release, buy one of the new product, copy it and have it drop shipped from China to anywhere in the world for cheaper than him within a month.

Jessica's business plan was sadly awful, thought she'd be pretty thorough with it. Just before Sugar fires her he asks her so you want to do the same thing that failed again? Yep. Ok bye

Frances did do well in the interviews but those sorts of businesses run on 3-5% net margins, it's really tough to stay competitive in what is essentially PoundLand for babys clothes. As she said about her (now defunct) shop in Nottingham, it treaded water. This is really common in retail with no vertical to go with it.

Selling eggs and flour for 3 quid a pop? Now that's what I call margin!

I'll give you a spin in the heads up for £50 as well if you want Alex (I want Alana )?

[DropTheHammer]

My favourite part of last night's episode was when Alan inadvertently panned himself by admitting it didn't get previous winners anywhere when they'd ring up people as say they're his business partner b

[TightEnd]

Alannah's business plan is so superior to Courtney's i am not sure i will know what to do with myself if he wins.

She has input costs of 18p a slice and sells that slice for £3.

surely just a case of hiring a few staff in regions she can't currently reach, scaling the distribution a bit initially then building it up?

all that compared to novelty items with the comatose man who was happy to put "fart in a lift with supermodels" on his questionnaire.

No contest. (until he wins)

Regards

TE

 

[SuuPRlim]

Rupert was right!

My analysis of the interview process!

Grianne -

LD's ante-post favourite! I think my analysis was correct though, she had the most credibility going in but her naivety shone through in spades with her plan, it was quite shambolic in all honesty. The crux of a good business plan is;

i) What I'm going to do.
ii) Where and how I'm going to do it
iii) Who my customers are, how many potential customers I have, where they are
iv) How I'm going to sell to them, how much i think i can sell and for how much = X profits
v) Why I'm the person that can deliver this.

She really couldn't accurately answer any of this, if she'd have come in with something like,

"Open X make up artist training centre at cost of £85,000, primary business will be training and recruitment, training industry is worth £150m and with Z sales strategy we hope to capture 0.4% (£600k) market share in year one, with myself and 4 stylists expecting a net profit of £50k. Expanding to 10 Stylists in month 15 and the opening of our second centre in month 24 with revenues by year 3 of £2.4m and net profit of £250k" Then it would have been a totally different day as I think LS would have had little choice but to final her.

Final nail in her coffin was coming up with "going to start a make-up brand as well" out of the blue, bottom line she just doesn't understand the business well enough to know where the growth needs to begin. 100% uninvestable.

Jessica -

She is likeable and talented for sure, the way she described her previous business as having plenty of money but it just dwindled through mis-management I completely buy. I'm sure with her selling the stuff she flogged tons of it but obviously little knowledge or care for what was going on behind this, I don't think she's really shown that things would be different this time round and with her business plan a carbon copy of the previous failure it became easily univestable and she was toast coming in. If Lord Sugar was looking for a sales manager for a big clothing business then I've little doubt she'd have gotten snap hired, her plan had more structure and backbone than grianne's though so a well deserved 4th spot.

Frances -

She also never had a chance in the boardroom, reality is if Lord Sugar wanted a business like this he could set it up in an afternoon and employ a Frances to run it, you need a big wharehouse (he must have) retail contacts for line-end stock (if he doesn't have he will get easily) cash to buy stock (he has a bit of cash laying about im sure) a big retail space (he can get whichever space he wants.) Frances is great but he can find someone similar and have 100% of this business... She doesn't really bring much unique to the table here.

On the same note, Frances doesn't REALLY need Lord Sugar, £250k in cash is nice and having him on hand is very valuable, but she knows the market, her business is successful if she needs cash for stock the banks will lend and she can keep 100%. Surely starting an online site then looking for bigger premises is the way for her. It would have been a bad deal from both ends and I think he knew this instinctively as he went into the boardroom LS.

Courtney & Alana

Abso breezed it, I'd be surprised if off camera Claude and Karen weren't saying "well Alan it's obviously Courtney and Alana isn't it?" and been universal nodding from all the advisors. Unlike the others they brought business plans that were logical, based on facts, backed up by current trade and success and genuinely warranted the investment, both show clear scope for expansion and growth. Forgone conclusion from 20minutes in it was these 2 imo.

Regards

LD

[SuuPRlim]

HEADS UP BATTLE!

Tighty - have to disagree that Alana's business plan is far superior, the food food business has great margins yes but it's really really tough.

Just like pretty much every high margin business the £/item profit is low, she sells a cake for £3 (which is £2.40 after VAT) that costs 20p to make, she's making about £2.20 a cake GROSS PROFIT, a £1m gross profit will require 450k cakes sold, 1,300 per day.  So it's a volume business, and volume businesses have 3 major problems;

1) (The most crucial) can you actually sell the volume
2) Can you produce the volume and maintain the quality
3) Waste, distribution and Storage - you're handling a lot of stock, this is expensive and difficult.

1) Can she sell the volume?

Of course she can, can she sell the volume at £3 p/cake though? I tell you this now, she won't be getting £3 a brownie at trade price, if she gets a chain of delicatessens to take 1000 a week, they will have the price RIGHT down, £1-£1.20 a piece probably, now all of sudden we're on 78% margin and making 75p per item 1.3m of these need to be sold to make a GP of £1m. If she hits the jackpot and gets into supermarkets of Pret then her margins will get squeezed into the floor.

2) Can she produce the volume and maintain the quality

Don't see why not, actually will be her biggest strength this as she seems really organised and if she gets production right from the offset (something that will DEFO happen alongside Lord Sugar) then her costs will hopefully come slamming down as she starts to produce more. Low costs and high output.

3) Waste, Distribution and Storage

This is where food businesses have a shocker, waste is a big thing. In my restaurants I've also tried to work on 1.5% waste/turnover so if you're turning over £15k p/week net you're expecting to waste about £225 in stock, things get dropped, go past the date, made wrong, need to be given away for whatever reason. How do you store everything, the rules around food storage is intense nowadays and require a lot of red-tape and man-power.  These are fresh, short-life products so they need to be delivered daily pretty much, cost of running 2 delivery vans with drivers for 1 year, about £100k? That's a lot of cakes you need to sell to cover that cost.

It's this that makes a LOT of food businesses unfeasible and why the glam around Alana's magical margins is a big mirage, gross profits very high initially but margins get squeezed and costs alongside running this type of business make for low Net Profits.

Courtney's business on the other hand is a low-margin, high volume business, stack him up using the same questions;

1. Can he sell the volume

Certainly you'd rather have any of the other 4 top 5 selling his stuff, maybe he employs Jessica as his sales director? I don't know, he's not got a lot about him...

2. Can he produce the volume and maintain the quality

Yes, 100% he can do this, and the more he can sell then the lower his costs will likely be, although selling in higher volume usually damages your margins.

3. Waste, Storage and Distribution

Waste is practically zero, storage is easy he just needs a wharehouse (will cost, maybe Lord Sugar will lend one at the start?) distribution again is just an expense, can use Royal Mail, freight service etc depending on the quantity.  Some suppliers will even ship direct to customers for you saving all this.

So whereas Courtney has lower margins, less charisma and less sales ability his business is a hell of a lot less risky, really the BIG thing for Shuggs (and one of his guys nailed it on the show) is he's betting on Courtney's instincts, can he spot the right products at the right times and will his flair for design be good enough, and actually I think this is the one thing we've seen from Courtney that has been decent in the tasks. Alana could fall down on a million different things, with this is mind I think I make courtney a favourite in the final.

That being said, I don't think AS has any involvement in the food business, and he's getting a bit older, doesn't really need the money and the chance to be in a new industry and have a crack at it with a clearly very capable person might appeal to him, however this comes around every year and every time he goes with the safest option.

Truth is he's virtually gtd to make money in Courtney's business, I doubt courtney has enough about him to make it a big success but if he gets some good sales people on board then the chance of failure is pretty minute.

Courtney to win imo, happy to take bets.

[TightEnd]

Interesting

Can she scale it up? i think is the key question on one person

Can he find ideas early, and keep finding them to be in growth spells for different products at the start? i think is the key question for the other

i guess i would back Alannah rather than Courtney to have the drive to do this.

[SuuPRlim]

Interesting

Can she scale it up? i think is the key question on one person

Can he find ideas early, and keep finding them to be in growth spells for different products at the start? i think is the key question for the other

i guess i would back Alannah rather than Courtney to have the drive to do this.

Yeah, exactly.

If it was soley a question of drive Alana would win for certain, but it's also a risk-vs-reward consideration, i think courtney with Lord Sugar's help is likely to have a very good novelty gifts design and wholesale business, I think he's very unliekly to dust off the £250k and very likely to turn a profit. Shuggs sharpens up his production, gets some sales people in and gets courtney on with designing new products then it's all looking very safe and solid. Is he going to turn it into an innovative, world leading business thought? Seems unlikely from what we've seen from Courtney.

Alana could, I believe, create an amazing business with Lord Sugar's help, she's more passionate, driven, innovative and has much more personality. But, with competition insane, business fraught with danger, less knowledge for LS, chance of failure is much higher.

Lord Shuggs has never gone for risky businesses in this process, ever. I think because of how dull Courtney is I think this could well be the time he starts, but I just think he'll go for courtney because he knows he's going to make money here.

[TightEnd]

but Suralan has always wanted to diversify away from businesses he already has and knows, i think, in previous series and go into new areas?

so in recent series he's gone into recruitment, beauty products, Plumbing and electrical installation, an inventor, search engine optimisation. think thats the last 5 series

he's essentially been doing novelty goods/wholsesale buy and sell since he was 16, which Courtney offers.

[SuuPRlim]

But he's always gone for the safest option, every time.

I do hope Alana wins actually I just have a feeling its courtney

[Horneris]

I backed Alana in play during the interviews (when 5 left) @ 7/4 last night with a friend  

But after hearing Courtney's business plan I think he might be fav at this point. He might be a bit drab but he was shy and coming up with 33 novelty gift products from scratch is impressive however you look at it.

Oh and Claude absolutely bums him.

If Alana had Courtney's business she'd be unbackable at this point.

[4KSuited]

Once again we have superb analysis from our in house expert, SuuPPrlim. Agree with everything. Only thing to add was that I was truly impressed by Courtney's speed in coming up with his Lord Sugar Dispenser under pressure. Perhaps the edit helped, but still....

It's an interesting dilemma that Lord Sugs is faced with. He may have already decided (in show time) that he'll let the decision rest on the candidates' performances in the final task. After all, neither of them actually properly employ anybody else in their businesses, and this is something they will have to do when funded. Whilst all the eliminated candidates usually try their best, there's still a great deal of man-management required if the task is to be won. This is where I think Alana will crush Courtney; but strange things happen...

Having said that, whilst he won't want to blow £250k, at the same time he'll want to have some fun with it - and this may also be where Alana is slightly ahead. He also has a penchant for working with people he quietly admires, or has an affinity with - which is where Courtney has an edge.

Dilemma indeed.

Regards
4KS

[ripple11]

Maybe Alan has seen the success of Bake Off and wants a slice of the action......with Mary as consultant obviously


Regards

Ri