The Apprentice - Season 17 - Thread 2 - The Season With A lot of (Lip) Filler!

[RicciardoPerez]

Thread 2 :)

Looking forward to catching up on tonight's ep! What was it again? A children's cartoon?

I can't believe they sneered at marinies grants abs funding -oh you don't really have it do you?

They know how it works, you get it on signing leases etc, similar to mortgages. It's standard. I assume they had not much better to pick on.

Hopefully Marnie wins. The rest seem an embarrassment to women in business.

Yeh Marnie had obviously done extremely well to get so far.

They couldn’t find much except the staff thing and having a go re grants wasn’t right

The interview stage has always been dodgy. The winner of an early series was confronted with lying on his CV. I thought allowing him to win sent a terrible message.

I also think Marnie will win being the best of the worst although her idea of not paying the staff was clearly ridiculous and I do wonder how much demand there would be for her gym in an area already overcrowded with gyms.
The fact that Rochelle thought that 50m square was sufficient to have 6 hairdressers and other staff, equipment etc and Im assuming at the very least 1 loo and somewhere comfortable to sit whilst waiting for your appointment was also embarrassing, thats the same size as my living room and to think you can pay the staff working in the most expensive part of London £12.50 an hour!!!
You might just about get a away with a pokey salon with no loo in a small provincial town where most customers are having their rollers put in or paying £20 for a dry cut (which is what I pay) and listening to local gossip but people paying Im assuming central London prices will have significantly higher expectations. I also thought there was a terrible shortage of hairdressers.

It was ludicrous to choose Rochelle only on the basis that she is the most experienced. The other side of that coin is that if she hasn't scaled her business up within fourteen years it's not likely to happen now.

@NosnowontheScottishhills - that’s probably what her business is like now- Small provincial hairdressers.

@JustDanceAddict I don't know Milton Keynes (the clue is in my user name) she claims she owns an award winning salon over three floors offering training but you can dress anything up to look good if you want too.

I do believe Marnie was the strongest last night, she was better able to answer their questions and address their challenges. I understood from her interview with Linda that it was part of her business model that she didn't pay her coaches/trainers, rather than it was an oversight (like Victoria). Ok, it's a shit model but it wasn't an error.

Completely aside... I'm sorry, I know I sound like a bitch, but I can't stand looking at Dani & her pneumatic lips 👄 & then last night her teeth looked ridiculous too, like they were an ultra bright mouth guard not actual teeth 😖

Obviously it's edited to be a certain way, but it felt like Dani had to squeeze a tear out because Victoria had cried.

to think you can pay the staff working in the most expensive part of London £12.50 an hour!!!

She wouldn’t necessarily have to pay them anything. Renting chairs to hairdressers by salon owners is a frequently used business model.

Presumably Marnie’s business plan has passed the tests of all the funding bodies that have already committed so it can’t be ludicrous. She’s only there for the publicity, if she doesn’t win another investor will approach her.

Karren and Linda were basically just trolling the candidates. They might as well have saved the questions and just given them the finger and blown raspberries at them.

There have always been faults even in series where the candidates have seemed pretty competent.
This year though it almost seemed mean to a) get rid of candidates early in the process who could have had credible plans b) lead incompetent candidates on to the semi final just so they can be ripped to shreds in the interviews. (Everyone is ripped to shreds interviews but when you've got people who don't know the difference between turnover and profit, or fail to include any stock it makes it way too easy)

Victoria should have got the boot weeks ago but I still don't excuse Linda for being a patronising cow and telling her to go back to cabin crew.

However now we're on series 20 or whatever why are anyone them remotely surprised at how brutal the interviews are....??They always have been. They all said they were scared of Karren but none of the interviewers give them an easy ride. Claude used to be known as the Rottweiler but think he seems about the most reasonable!

I do believe Marnie was the strongest last night, she was better able to answer their questions and address their challenges.

There have been a few times when the strongest didn’t win sadly. I hope Lord Sugar doesn’t just go for the usual hair type business.

Also with gyms being near other gyms makes sense (okay you'd want to show that those gyms were full capacity)

City of London is just the place where people want a quick lunchtime workout and can probably support 22 gyms-everyone wants one 5 mins walk away maximum.

In fairness the business plans, with the exception of Marnie’s, sound appalling and they each tried to deny, fluff and wiggle their way out of absolutely obvious issues. All the “we think you’re amazing” chatter between candidates completely denies the reality that they’ve been utterly unprepared. I’d be pretty pissed off if someone appeared at interview without the most basic understanding of the business.

I understood from her interview with Linda that it was part of her business model that she didn't pay her coaches/trainers, rather than it was an oversight (like Victoria). Ok, it's a shit model but it wasn't an error.

It's not necessarily a shit model. Lots of gyms hire out rooms to instructors who then work for themselves in running classes.

Ah OK fair enough, that makes sense.
Of course she probably, in reality, got to explain that to Linda - but of course we don't see that.

Marine must have impressed a lot of other people as that was long list of investors there she reeled off.
Although the Baroness was pulling a face at not having a venue , even she had to admit she had done a lot of the initial work there and just needed the next steps in place to go ahead.
It appears to be the better business plan of a not very good bunch.
Many people go into the hairdressing/ Beauty game for high profits, it's generally their mums and dads who get involved and lend them money and their accountants ( from a few people I've heard about who have ended up with salons ! Dad does all the building work and mum works there too)
Belgravia is very high end though.
This might appeal to Lord sugar more than boxing.

"Belgravia is very high end though.
This might appeal to Lord sugar more than boxing".

I would have thought the annual cost of renting and fitting out suitable premises in Belgravia would take most of Lord Sugars £250K. I think Rochelle estimated her fit out cost was going to be £48K my DH business means that he works with many high end construction firms in that area; the fitters alone are charging £500 a day per man (assuming you can get them as there is a huge shortage of labour post Brexit). He very much doubts you'd fit out a salon for £48k more likely double that if not more. He also knows quite a few companies who have very credible businesses who try renting premises in Belgravia to give their businesses a "shop front" and a year or so in go bust or give it up because of the extortionate rents. I also wondered if she included the business rates in her cash forecast.
I know hairdressers rent chairs but that was not her the model she was proposing on her business plan.

Going to be Marnie then I suppose !
..

I think it might be Rochelle as Marnie had lots of investors already so maybe Alan don’t want involved also(?)

Their business plans are shocking. I honestly can’t believe they’d genuinely put forward such rubbish plans - surely some of the mistakes are deliberately added for drama? I mean as a basic example why couldn’t an apparently competent young woman starting a sweetie business at a kiosk add up her weekly rent correctly? It’s fairly straight forward even if she didn’t have “business experience” she must pay rent/mortgage on a home it’s a similar thing. It’s not complicated forecasting or anything. Utterly bizarre and makes them all seem ridiculous.

Your Fired is dire but I watched anyway. Victoria seemed sheepish about the whole thing and said she’d sold her “business”. No surprise there! Dani clearly didn’t expect to sell hair and was just looking for tv exposure (it’s been reported she was trying to get in love island too(?)). Meghan was quick to get in that she had her alcohol licence two months after the interviews so a massive FU to Linda who suggested it could take a while. Yet she doesn’t seem to be running the cocktail bar yet and was cagey regarding her plans. I liked her but she needs to tone down the “I’m standing up for myself and my ideas and business” mindset as she comes across as quite hard harsh and rude when I think she’s actually probably quite lovely and doing well for herself but just needs to learn how to be confidence but not harsh.

does any one know if they still do any celebrity versions? I watched the Australian celebrity one and enjoyed that. Challenges seemed more interesting than this latest series anyway!

I think someone up thread said they knew someone who nearly made it into the final 16 but not once were they asked by the programme organisers about their business/business plan that sums up the problem with the whole thing. I don't think Victoria ever had a business plan I think she quickly cobbled something together when she got accepted on the show, and the same for Dani, for both of them it was all about TV exposure. I think Megan was genuine but her ideas were very weak as are Rochelle and Marnie. Whats annoying is that none of those three could even remotely be described as astute business women. My dog (who is definitely not a candidate for dog Mensa) could have come up with something more credible.

Sadly it's all become like big brother not ordinary business people anymore just people desperate to be reality stars.

Marnie's funding so far is in the form of loans, not investments, I thought? So the business will start off with quite a lot of debt. I'm sure that's normal for a start-up but it does raise the question of how long it would take for Sugar to get a return on his £250k.

I thought Marnies funding came mainly from grants (which don't always have to be paid back) rather than loans?

I may be wrong, but I thought it was loans. She mentioned a bounce-back loan but I can't remember the details of all of them.