The world of fashion is a more complex business than it appears. From the moment Lord Sugar announced the task you had a feeling this was going to be a tricky task. Without the luxury of time to actually research the market place its obviously difficult to select the two designers. However instinct should tell them that its likely to be easier to sell the cheaper ranges than the top end stuff, especially when you have no customer base to start from.
I’m known for getting business owners to consider their gut instinct more often, but, those gut feelings are usually based on some knowledge of the business you are in and it was obvious from some of the decisions made that few of the candidates had knowledge of retail and fashion. Other than Alex, who chose to pop his head over the parapet and announce his retail guru status, and what’s more his in depth knowledge of the location for the task ‘The Trafford Centre’. Do these guys not watch previous episodes when these promises of insider knowledge and higher level expertise regularly comes back to bite them in the board room?
Lord Sugars aide Nick (my favourite in all this) likened Stella standing in the shop window with a short sparkly dress on as similar to the ladies seen in windows in Amsterdam. Don’t you just know that will be used against her in the future, and didn’t she think, when she was stood awkwardly waving, just how it would look on TV?
Chris seemed to excel at selling clothes to women. He is a bit of a smoothy and could be worth keeping an eye on for the future. Paloma, on the other hand, sealed her own fate by her outburst in the board room; very ugly, unladylike and unprofessional. Sir Alan you were right to let her go.
Daft saying of the week came from Alex, the retail expert, who stood outside the shop with a limp sweater on a hanger asking random passers by “What do you think of this jumper, do you like it” odd they replied “not really”. Oh Alex you didn’t listen to your famous retail professor!
