Episode 2

Designing A Dog Accessory

The teams had to design a dog accessory and sell this to retailers. I was in the losing team.

This was definitely more difficult compared to last week’s challenge! No one in Eclipse had really ever owned a dog. In fact. I was the closest thing to a dog-owner as I had once looked after a puppy (golden labrador) for 2 months.

Rory had a tough time this week. He had to lead a newly ‘forming’ (some would say ‘storming’) team while having to manage Tre. I think Rory saw Jadine and Tre clashing last week and he didn’t want to be in the same situation. I think he ended up over-compensating and getting Tre’s back up, which further exacerbated the situation.

The whole ‘take your jackets off’ was just plain bizarre. Sure, it helped us loosen up and get the creative juices flowing. But it was the way in which it was done that was excruciating.

Going to the focus group was very frustrating – the traffic was horrible and we considered turning back a number of times, but in the end we decided to turn up, late though we were!

I really enjoyed pitching to the retailers and received a lot of positive feedback on my sales/presentation skills. Unfortunately in the end, we missed the boat with Pets At Home. They felt the product was not developed and we were unable to convince them otherwise.

Ifti was very frustrating. It was annoying that he was homesick as this definitely slowed down our team. The task was so fast paced and stressful, we could’ve really used his help!

I really do not want to go to that horrible Loser Café ever again!

Lohit Kalburgi