Get On Your Red Bike And Make A Million!

By Sue Holden who is a former owner of her own gallery and picture framing business of 14 years and now a private Civil Funeral Celebrant and Grief Recovery Specialist.

She feels some of the apprentices might need her services for loss of future hopes, dreams, and promises! For more information please click here.

It’s week four and the 13 remaining apprentices are a third of the way through their long interview. 

We viewers are still hanging in to see if, for once, we won’t be shouting at our TV screens that we could do better and asking “whatever happened to common sense and basics?” 

This week’s task was to design an electric bike, host a launch event, pitch and sell to bike retailers. The team making the most sales wins. Additionally, the teams had to choose an accessory to sell alongside the bikes. 

Have you noticed how the candidates seem to be getting up even earlier this series, although I still fail to see how they can get up, shower, wash hair, dry hair, style hair, apply make-up, sometimes iron a shirt, dress, have breakfast and prepare for the day in twenty minutes! This week they had an extra ten minutes – wow! If only they were as efficient at the tasks!

Lottie put herself up for team leader as ‘all her family have electric bikes and so does she’ and she now ‘knows Lord Sugar better than any others because of her time spent returning to the boardroom’ (yeah!). In the other team, Iasha also put herself forward because she had a company sold electrical products. There was no answer to that. 

Thomas put himself forward as team leader for Unison because; he is Thomas! Strangely, he wanted a bike that was elegant and classic for the 40-year-old man keen on fitness and the outdoors. What he got was a bright orange and red bike complete with rocket logo on the front more suitable for a devilish child! 

Iasha’s team decided on a folding bike for the avatar ‘Sophisticated Sarah’ the yummy mummy who had nothing better to do than to ride around meeting friends, communing with nature and drinking coffee. What she got was a dark blue masculine coloured bike more suitable for the city commuter. However it was ideal for sales.

It is amazing how all contestants seem to be in agreement with each other at the beginning of the task and then quickly start to disagree, arguments and disagreements break out – and the blaming begins.

The choosing of accessories to sell alongside the bikes seemed to be a non-event until Tommy decided to model the lycra cycle suit and Ryan-Mark could only blink at the spherical lights that looked more like ‘glow-in-the-dark testicles! - then you couldn’t think of anything else! Thankfully they chose the helmet with built in indicators.

Prices were plucked from thin air with Tommy’s team choosing a price range of £1,200 down to £800 per bike and Iasha’s team settling on £1,700 down to £1,200. Needless to say, these prices weren’t stuck to. How could you turn down the bid for more units bringing in more revenue? Lottie did. 

It all seemed a bit disjointed this week with no team seeming likely to win. For once, they both had the basis of a good product, i.e. an electric bike that really sell themselves. The retailers knew their markets and who they would be selling to and bought accordingly.

Amazingly the total sales for Iasha’s team was £1.2 MILLION! which must be the highest level of sales achieved in the 15 years of The Apprentice and they were clear winners. The losing team did make more than £400k of sales which initially sounded great until you realised that was only a third of the winning team’s total. 

In the boardroom the usual back stabbing and defending began. Thomas put the boot in and immediately put the blame elsewhere. Marianne was there for not following orders and Lubna because she did nothing. She did say later “I should have shown him my capabilities”. Well yes, she should because Lord Sugar saw no reason to keep her around and she was fired. 

I thought Thomas, who seems to have a reserved seat in the Boardroom, would also be ‘on his bike’ this week for not selling the high ticket item when he can clearly sell – however this ability saved him and he lives to fight another day, just.

Take a look at this series’ candidates HERE!