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The Apprentice Series 10


meanmistermustard

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I thought Bianca was quite an impressive person. She was very professional, was great at pitching and presenting (even on video) and had a rock solid sense of confidence but without ever seeming arrogant, hard or unlikeable. She never made outlandish claims, didn't rant and rave and seemed to get on with most people. She made two mistakes in the series, both of which were easy to make, slips of the tongue really.

Unfortunately her business idea was just too unwieldy. She said she probably wasn't the first person to think of it, so why then had it never got to market? The sheer (excuse the tights pun) size of the range made it very difficult to market and in the end it was just too 'big'. 70, 90, 200 different products was never going to work for a new company launch.

Mark was one of the best candidates from early in the process. He obviously knows what he's talking about and he was an excellent team leader. At the end of the day any one can make coloured tights but Mark had a USP, his own knowledge and personality, and that can't be replicated by business rivals. It was just a much more manageable idea and he was the deserved winner.

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Daniel's plan was surely not a booking site though. Individual venues have online booking and some places share sites. Daniel's plan was a centralised online event organisation, so booking, and food, drink etc etc. There could be no money in a booking site because it could not attract the online traffic for smaller events, for which it might be suitable, and no one organising a big event would try to go through a website to do so.

The very best a website like that could offer would be available dates, rooms, and numbers. And yet, even the numbers are variable based on seating, catering, stage etc etc. Some halls can cater for maximum 250 or maximum 100 depending on what the client wants for set-up. There is no chance a centralised website can sort out those details, thus it would be fairly redundant. I think Daniel even admitted this on Fired!

Thats a pretty bold statement. Very similar to what supermarkets said about online grocery shopping, what high street retailers said about online clothes shopping and what travel agents said about online holiday booking.

I would be amazed if 80% of venues bookings dont fall under fairly small number of standard setups. These could easily be booked online with catering choices, decorations etc as well. If you want xx people you can only pick a or b from the catering would be incredibly easy to setup. I thought Daniels idea was to also incorporate other things that werent offered by the venues, like flowers, table settings, wedding cakes etc and allow people to book them all at the same time.

The support behind the site would be as important as the site itself but as a concept, its technically not difficult at all

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Just watched it too. Pissed me off no end that Sugar was touting how he was taking a big risk with Mark. A load of crap! His business needs probably £20K in office equipment, another £20K in recruitment fees (although Mark probably has contacts so no need to go through agencies). Get a small team of around 5 and grow as the customer base grows. 10 clients at £3K a month and you are into a tidy profit since running costs are minimal.

The only barrier to entry is getting somebody who understands the industry which Mark clearly does.

The bigger risk was the tights. Procurement, packaging, advertising, sales and all that other pish. Small margins, large sunk costs, many competitors are far bigger risks than setting up an office with a few computers.

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