Personal Annoyance

Tesla

Tesla

Tesla

Soldato
Joined
19 Jan 2003
Posts
17,578
Location
Bristol, UK
There is a type of person which is starting to bug me, they seem to crop up on business-related TV shows like The Apprentice and Dragon's Den.

Now, I guess they are some what portrayed like this by the director but there always seems to be a top-uni graduate in some area of business who has no real world idea about business.

That fairy-bird from The Apprentice. Aleisha or Alexa or something like that.

It was her role to "project manage" and she decided on the selling price of their product, Pizza.

She must have just plucked this number out of thin air as they were selling each Pizza for LESS than the cost to make one!

I don't claim to be a business guru but I can easily grasp the concept of profit and am concerned this girl studied at Cambridge for many years and still fails to be able to.

I would like to know other's thoughts on this.

Thanks for listening.
 
She sold at that price to undercut the competition.

it was throw away a lot of pizza or it was sell at a reduced price and recoup at least some of the outlay.
 
Gilly said:
She sold at that price to undercut the competition.

it was throw away a lot of pizza or it was sell at a reduced price and recoup at least some of the outlay.
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They sold at a loss from the outlay from what I gathered by watching the program later on that evening where the go into more detail about the loser.

Even if what you said is correct this so say very intelligent individual had a lose-lose plan. Either lose a bit of money or a lot of money. That's just simply not business.
 
Tesla said:
They sold at a loss from the outlay from what I gathered by watching the program later on that evening where the go into more detail about the loser.
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not until they factored in the cost of the unused produce (the amount of chickens they threw away untouched, etc).
 
Gilly said:
not until they factored in the cost of the unused produce (the amount of chickens they threw away untouched, etc).
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Ah, ok. See my edited post above, what are your thoughts on my 2nd comment?

Also who do you think Alan will hire? I think either Saeed or Paul with Paul winning it.
 
Sometimes it is good business to sell under cost as you dont include overheads, such as lighting + heating, you can use the other products to recoup these costs.

But with this situation I understand that they sold them to recoup SOME of the costs, this is better than none. Leading on from that, it was a poor business plan which let them down.
 
Tesla said:
Even if what you said is correct this so say very intelligent individual had a lose-lose plan. Either lose a bit of money or a lot of money. That's just simply not business.
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Problem is that wasn't the plan. The plan had failed, and failed disastrously. The cafe over the road was packed and hers had no-one at all in it. She had the asian lad who is so completely up himself he wouldn't do anything she told him to so when they were trying to drum up business he wasn't helping, and the full cafe decided to go for broke and bring down their prices after they were already in profit.

To get any food at all sold she had to undercut them. This meant selling at a loss, which is better than not selling at all...

[edit]And I reckon the asian lad was completely at fault for the entire thing and should've gone.

No idea who they'll hire. I can't stand the programme and avoid it when possible, this one episode I couldn't avoid.
 
Wasn't their pricing strategy for breaking even around the price of roughly £4.50 for one slice. I don't have any experience or research on the figures, but honestly, who would seriously buy one slice for £4.50 ish?

Wasn't that bad management, surely they should have tried to feel what the market price was, £3 a piece and use less toppings would have been much better than £5 with acres of chicken on it?

Anyway, i know nothing of business/economics bar what I did at AS level :p was funny seeing her get sacked though
 
Did anybody watch last nights show. I was a bit shocked by that woman selling off some stock at a loss at 1pm when they had a further 6hours of trading time left.

Like AMS said, perhaps do it at 4 or 5pm but 1pm is rather daft.
 
I agree with what has been said in that losing a little bit of money is better than losing all money. However, if these are the only options you have then you're a bit rubbish.
 
Tesla said:
I agree with what has been said in that losing a little bit of money is better than losing all money. However, if these are the only options you have then you're a bit rubbish.
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Oh definitely. She relied too heavily on people that professed to have knowledge when they didn't really have a clue, and they didn't listen to the chefs when in the planning stage. For these things she was at fault but not as much as the asian lad (Saeed?)

The biggest mistakes (also Saeed's fault) were a) not checking when the supplier's opening times were, b) not haggling on price, c) paying over the expected price for the chickens having been previously quoted for smaller chickens...

All Saeed's fault.
 
Gilly said:
Oh definitely. She relied too heavily on people that professed to have knowledge when they didn't really have a clue, and they didn't listen to the chefs when in the planning stage. For these things she was at fault but not as much as the asian lad (Saeed?)
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Yes Saeed is the asian chap. I read up on him. He is actually doing OK for himself.

I wouldn't actually want to work for AMS and am suprised all these people do aswell. I like working for myself.
 
Gilly said:
Not really, thats for when building a market share and future business. Thats not what they were doing.
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Sorry, i was merely making the general case that, business wise, its not an imperitive that every product sold should make a profit.
 
Didn't GB raise the personal annoyance threshold in the budget yesterday?

Tesla said:
...this girl studied at Cambridge for many years...
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Don't get me started - I have a lad working for me that, quite often, likes to point out that he has a first from Oxford.

I then like to point out that he's still a ****ing idiot.

And that I have a first class MA (Hons).

With regards selling below cost (even below marginal cost) - Supermarkets can almost get away with this on a long-term basis, as they can make so much money from their cash balance. Although it's an extremely thin line to walk.
 
Borris said:
Don't get me started - I have a lad working for me that, quite often, likes to point out that he has a first from Oxford.
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Its not really fair to compare Oxford and Cambridge - one group is severly disdvantaged by their East Anglian countryside yokel status.....
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
The real idiot in that task was the one who ordered 100 chickens for 100 pizzas
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Yes, my wife used to work in the catering trade and did ordering for a Little Chef branch (on the A50) - She watched the repeat and swore at the TV.

100 Chickens ordered without telling the supplier what size you wanted on the answerphone.

Go Team!!! :rolleyes:
 
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