For their final task, The Apprentice 2012 candidates tonight must create a new original luxury brand.
“We are in recessionary times at the moment but there’s still a great market for luxury products, the key is they have to be affordable luxury products,” Lord Sugar tells the five remaining candidates.
He explains: “Your task this week is to create an affordable luxury product range and then you’ll be presenting to industry experts, and here’s the bad news, and me, what your business model is all about.”
Lord Sugar moves Tom to join Ricky Martin on Sterling before appointing Adam Corbally as Project Manager for Phoenix, while Ricky steps forward to lead Sterling.
Phoenix decide to create a luxury confectionary product range, with Adam agreeing that they should focus on chocolate, and they pick the name Sweet Thing.
Whilst Jade Nash heads to the factory to create the products, Adam and Nick visit a high class Chocolatier for market research. Karren, however, is left disappointed with the boys’ behaviour, stating, “Adam and Nick had a wonderful opportunity to meet a businessman who has created a fantastic bespoke shop, to help them put together their business model. What have they spent their time doing here? Eating chocolate. They failed to grasp the opportunity.”
After they are advised of the popularity of high end jellies, Adam is convinced that they are the way forward, and when Jade calls to discuss the product range he insists, “I really want to go for the jellies…jellies are the new big thing, it’s going to be big.” Nick and Jade both raise concerns about this, with Nick explaining that he doesn’t feel that they need them, but Adam believes that all the products tie in together and insists on the inclusion of jellies. Afterwards, Nick worries, “I think where Adam and me have maybe disagreed is the inclusion of jellies. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to include them but it could maybe detract a little bit from the focus of tour task.”
Later on, Jade suggests making the jellies alcoholic and naming them ‘drunken jellies’. Adam is unsure but doesn’t have any other ideas. Nick takes the opportunity to again question the inclusion of jellies in the product range, stating, “I’m a bit worried about our brand because we’ve got so many different products, it just seems very random.” Adam, however, ignores this and eventually agrees that they should create the ‘drunken jellies.’
Over on Sterling, and the two sole candidates Ricky and Tom decide to opt for a male grooming product range. Watching over proceedings, Nick Hewer concedes that it’s a suitable product range for the pair to pick, “they’re the right sort of age group to know all about that sort of thing, and looking at them, with their sort of hair gelled quiffs, they obviously have a personal interest in that particular sector.”
Eventually settling on the product name, Modern Gentleman, Ricky heads to the cosmetic factory to make the male grooming products, whilst Tom takes charge of the branding and design for their prototype shop. At the designs studio, Tom panics that the branding he has designed is boring and not exciting enough, saying, “it’s a bit safe”, but decides to go ahead with it in the end. Observing, Nick Hewer explains the importance of getting this branding right, “get that wrong and people turn up their noses.” Tom plays it safe again when it comes to designing the store, deciding to decorate it with charcoal grey and use dark woods.
Opening their store the next day, Nick Hewer voices his concerns about the pair’s creativity, stating, “Ricky and Tom, where they are very strong is on the analytical side, the business side. But when it comes to being creative, I think that they really are pedestrian. The retail space seems to have hardly anything on display. It was their view that they should go for a minimalist look and they certainly achieved that, it’s like a closing down sale or something.”
Both Tom and Nick Hewer’s doubts seem justified when a visiting customer comments, “in terms of the retail space, it seems very dull. I think it could do with some excitement. The colour schemes on the labelling are also very very conservative.” Another customer is clearly on the same wavelength, feeding back to a disappointed Tom, “I’m not sure I like the branding to be honest. It’s not distinctive enough, it’s too bland.”
Back at the house that night, Ricky has clearly accepted this criticism, stating, “One of the biggest mistakes I think we have made is the packaging.”
See who comes out on top in the boardroom at 9PM on BBC One.
Browse pictures of tonight’s below…
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