Re: The Apprentice - oh dear god....

On 18/07/2011 10:48, michael adams wrote:
"Jeff Lawrence"<jeff.lawrence@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:j00q2l$vc6$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 18/07/2011 00:20, Mike Hall wrote:
On Jul 17, 11:56 pm, Froot Bat<m...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jul 2011 15:35:38 -0700 (PDT), Mike Hall<tar...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Still, a lumbar support chair and lumbar support advice, i.e. what 100
different companies are doing now.

Except Sugar. AIUI the whole premise was it would be a partnership
over their business idea and he wasn't even interested in the one that
won - yet gave that as the reason he fired Helen and outright stated
several times he wanted to get into cosmetics, yet fired Susan.

It was basically just one long episode of Dragon's Den; making a zero
risk investment in a product someone had invented and already done all
the hard work to get into Boots and Wal-Mart.

And then he even had his cake and ate it by saying he'd bring Susan in
on it too. Hell, maybe he'll get Helen to organize it all, because for
all the platitudes about how she'd have walked it in previous series,
and everyone saying they'd hire her, she came away with nothing. Even
her gift was shit. Susan's gift was great though; we had one of those.

You misunderstood: the Walmart/Boots product was the wavy emery board.

Yes, and that is what Sugar is interested in, he wants to bring that back into the
market and expand upon it. He's not interested at all in Tom's super-chair.


I was a bit surprised that Tom's previous prooduct was nail files myself - I
thought he'd designed some sort of electronic gadget.

Turns out he's a "nail file engineer".


Didn't you see the show where he showed what he'd done - I was suprised he pitched for the chair rubbish, I was expecting it to be an extension of the nail file thing.


I very much doubt Sugar would be interested in nail files.
Although given his references in the programme to a number of
the established big players and their reasearch and marketing
budgets its hard to see why he would want to get into cosmetics
either. The margins may be astronomical but so are
the marketing budgets in an industry based solely on
bullshit. If Sugar was carping at the level of footballers wages
just wait till he gets round to the negotiations with Kate
Moss's agent to be "The Face of Amsmooth


LOL *Amsmooth*


At a guess the only reason Tom was able to launch his nail files
at all is because there are factories in China more than happy to knock
them out at 10p each with minimal tooling costs. Or shipping costs for
that matter. Just post them a sample in an envelope and they'll give you a
quote by reply
These are the sort of things which will end up being carded in poundshops
at 4 for £1. The only reason Tom got any sales at all will possibly
be because for a three month period there was a window
when nobody else had them. If he had a watertight patents then he
wouldn't need to be appearing on game shows, a big player would have
bought him out.


He must have something in it - I suspect thats what Sugar is going for.


All Sugars successful products were built up, not just on good
ideas but making in making them at a lower cost than any of his
competitors could manage even if they'd wanted to - owing to his having
the best contacts in the electronics sourcing and assembly businness
in the Far East.

I had a quick Google for curved nail file and there are plenty of
top name brands offering them on the market. At a bigger margins
than Walmart could ever manage.



If he had all the patents then he'd make a tidy income surely. When he did discuss them - I think it was the companion show - I got the feeling he'd done as much as he could and was moving on.
.

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