The Apprentice Episode 3 - Smells Like Team Failure

"SMELL MY CANDLE"

Week 3 has arrived and Lord Sugar's big task was to get the teams to create a home fragrance product to sell on market stalls and retailers. He called house fragrance products a "hot trend", a statement wrong on many levels considering fragrance plug ins and candles are a solid staple of households and after last week was about wearable tech, Lord Sugar really needs to talk to his grandchildren more about what's hot. 

In an attempt to make sure there are male candidates by the series’ half way point, the teams were mixed up. Team Tenacity’s Katie cannonballed straight into the meeting and volunteered to be project manager because she loves buying home fragrance products, probably to hide the smell of someone talking shit. She went further on and thought buying lower quality wax but selling high would be a great idea because of the MARGINS and MARGINS ARE VERY IMPORTANT GUYS which I then started to worry she bought wax so cheap that they were the causes of at least 7 house fires in London (Alfie Moon should have put that on his insurance claim form). The team produced a candle called "British Breeze" which smelt like of green tea, aloe vera and lemongrass instead of cheap lager, cigarettes and Jeremy Kyle guests. 

Another week, another Steven "bitch please" face.

Team Summit was spearheaded by accountant Roisin, who is all about numbers and margins, so totalling up the sums and figures of this task likely leads to her having to take a cold shower every 2 hours. Her team produce a candle called "Beach Dreams" which most likely smelt of sand, sea and rain. Half of the team went to design the product and the other half made the samples, in which Soloman and Sanjay did the maths and instructions and Lindsay and Nurun who self relegated themselves to doing manual labour because they "wasn’t good with numbers" and weren't confident with smelling candles and reed diffusers. Really. 

Onto the day of selling and both teams had mixed results in selling their products on the market and to trade customers. Katie's sub team rushed around London selling their fragrances to anyone who looked professional and classy including pubs selling her reed diffusers as "they will keep your toilets fresh for a year", a statement that trading standards will have to investigate. Meanwhile the trading sub team struggled to shift their stock, namely Sarah. After publicly having a strop about packaging, she complained about how she wasn't able to sell her candles because of their price. Weirdly no one else was having problems selling more than one candle and she was promptly told to fuck off and sell more.

Lindsay doing her best at doing nothing.

While Katie's team was strict on pricing structure, Summit completely disregarded anything about pricing plans in the same way that Roy Keane is with Sir Alex Ferguson's opinions and threw them out of the window immediately. This was music to James' ears, fresh from blow drying his armpits to sell the candles at whatever price. He doesn't play by the rules but man, he reduces his team's profit margins with minimal results. Nurun's tactic of running around asking people about her candle got to the point I'm pretty sure Roisin wanted her to fail and I started to feel bad for her. Lindsay however got none of my sympathy as she stood around the market stand doing nothing but checking the packing was still in place like the last 8 times she checked. Suppose this is what happens when you allow swimming instructors onto the show, they look so out of their depth. 

In the end, Team Summit sold all their stock yet Team Tenacity had units left, they still lost by £14, making Summit all wonder what the hell Nurun and Lindsay were doing all day if they weren’t able to sell another candle. Lindsay on the spot committed seppuku and forced Lord Sugar to pity fire her and aimed his finger of doom at either Roisin, James or Nurun. Despite James' sucking up to Lord Sugar and Roisin's inability to keep product prices at a suitable level, Nurun got fired for not being able to sell enough. Two very predictable sackings this week considering the pair never looked comfortable with the tasks and just went along with their team's plans. Also makes me wonder if any of them were even suitable for the show when it looked like both women never really watched the show in the first place but to the producers' credit, watching a woman chasing people to sell a candle is pretty hilarious. 

Next week - Online video channels. If no one does a FIFA FUT opening packs video, I'll be very disappointed.