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Team Trigger
It’s not often that drunken ideas come to fruition, but after a chat in Gallery, myself and 3 of my friends decided to actually enter The Apprentice. The interview did not go according to plan as we couldn’t find where it was, we were already half an hour late and we had all been in the pub for the previous 3 hours.
Eventually we found CETLE and managed to give a decent, if unspectacular showing in the interrogation, I mean interview. If I’m being totally honest, I wasn’t surprised when we received an e-mail saying we hadn’t passed the interview. However, I was shocked when they later emailed saying a team had dropped out and we were next in line. What were the other 30 odd teams who didn’t pass the interview like?
So anyway, we’re in and we’re told to turn up on Wednesday morning in smart-casual clothing. I will confess that smartness in dress is not a strong point for me so I opted for a rather dapper combination of a shirt and shorts. Yes I was the only person there in shorts. There was an abundance of brown shoes and blazer jackets; in the words of Danny Dyer, I felt well out of my manor.
The first task was to bid for a tray of goods and sell the goods on campus with the 6 teams gaining the largest profits progressing to the next round, meaning 6 teams would get the chop in the cut throat first round.
In the words of Danny Dyer, I felt well out of my manor.
Our first set back of the day came when we mucked up our bidding form and upon asking for a new one, one of the organiser's, Laura, told us that the task of writing a number in a box was “not that difficult” and they had no spares. You know what, I think she was right and it highlighted the task in front of us. If we couldn’t write in a box, how could we beat 11 competent teams?
The bids were in and we decided to bid low on everything so whatever we got we would be profiting as soon as we sold the first unit. This tactic left us with 20 cans of deodorant which we thought at the time were a bargain for £1.16 each.
How do you pitch the sale to someone? “Oi love, you look like you smell, you fancy some deodorant” didn’t work the first 3 times so I decided to take a different angle.
As the day progressed it was clear that the only way to sell cans at a profit was to sucker your mates into buying them for £3 which returned a tidy profit of around £60. We thought this was great and would be pushing for a place in the top 6. However, as reports came in from other teams, it was clear this profit wasn’t quite going to cut the mustard.
Doughnuts were selling for £25, not a typing error there, £25. As Sir Chris Kamara would say, unbelievable Jeff.
5 o’ clock soon rolled around and the results ceremony was eagerly anticipated. A very drawn out affair ended with us being placed in 10th. At least we didn’t come last eh?
Scant consolation for a days hard work, however I did learn some things throughout the experience. Students, in general, do not like paying above the odds for anything, deodorant is hard to sell and most importantly, turning up to an interview with some dutch courage inside you definitely helps, fact.
Secretary of York Entrepreneurs
Challenge one was split into two parts. Firstly, the teams had to bid in a silent auction for thirteen different bundles of goods. Then the teams had to sell the bundle of goods and make as much profit as possible, with their bid deducted from the total revenue.
It was certainly stressful. Hours were spend choosing what to sell. Home Bargains had never seen so much bulk buying in its history with 11 out of the 13 items bought from them. We only just about managed to get it all in the car. (Doughnuts were sourced from Sainsbury’s.)
Then on the day the teams either didn’t get the bidding or didn’t stop moaning because they didn’t get the item they wanted.
For something so simple - you have to bid different amounts for each items, and the minimum bid being a pound, at least five teams struggled to read basic instructions.
It certainly showed off competitive strategies. Teams either got on with the job selling and concentrated their efforts on making as much money as possible or they were lazy and spent their entire time moaning.
You cannot control what other teams do, and thus teams that focused on maximising their opportunities ended up doing best. It is disappointing that some people chose the lazy option, as every team had enough talent to go through. The harder one works the luckier one seems to get in these challenges.
Challenge Two was a marketing and pitching challenge. The teams were given floor plans of a central venue in Heslington East and were asked to come up with their own fully costed ideas over what to do with the venue.
The presentations were in terms of their delivery and pitch were outstanding. In fact the judges commented on the exception quality of the work done, and it was very hard to distinguish between them. In the end though only three teams could go through and Vortex, Re-Brand and As Solid As Northern Rock did what was required to impress the judges.
Challenge Three is the one everyone wants to take part in, not just because it is the final but because it gives the most freedom for the teams to show off their creative flair. Three bars were sought and the teams bid in silent auction similar to challenge one for the bar of their choice.
Once the bars were allocated (Vortex-Vanbrugh, Re-Brand – Derwent, and As Solid As Northern Rock – Langwith) the teams had until 3pm to decide what they would do with their bars and get back to us with their plans so that we could double check with the relevant authorities that their plans were not in breach of minor event rules.
There was a twist to the challenge though. Not only would teams have to maximise the amount of people they got to their events, but also raffle tickets were issued to teams with a prize of £100 shopping in any shop of their choice, and a £100 bar tab in any bar of their choice. Teams had to sell the tickets for £1, with each ticket counting as ½ a person. 20% of the proceeds from each team would go to a charity of their choice.
Unlike previous years we choose not to release either the times of the counts or where the results would be so that no team would benefit from going out and getting extra people or playing the basic trick of pretending their event was longer than the others. Furthermore raffle tickets were taken off teams at 9pm so that they could be counted and ready for results at 10:30pm.
As usual the teams maximised the raffle to the best of their ability and it really does even out the contest for those teams that get stuck with the smaller bars (although the bidding takes this into account to). The count was close, with less than 20 people between Re-Brand and Vortex. Despite several re-counts Vortex were hired. It was an excellent effort to get to the final and the teams must be commended.
Hopefully they will defend their title next year.
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