Tom Pellereau wins 'The Apprentice' 2011

[dutchman]

Tom Pellereau has been crowned the winner of The Apprentice 2011.



The 31-year-old inventor was chosen by Lord Sugar to become his new business partner over Helen Milligan, while rival finalists Jim Eastwood and Susan Ma were fired earlier tonight after interviews with the entrepreneur's trusted colleagues Claude Littner, Margaret Mountford, Mike Suter and Matthew Riley.

Sugar will now provide a £250,000 investment into Pellereau's business, which aims to reduce the financial and personal costs of employee back pain through specialist chairs.

In the final boardroom, Lord Sugar brushed off concerns from his advisors regarding Pellereau's "lack of focus" and "flawed" plan to offer posture checks to office workers, instead noting the potential in his invention of a chair to combat back pain.

"I would give up and emigrate if someone said to me now, 'What you've got to do is allow all your employees to have a desk chair check'," Sugar stated.

"Tom, you've got the experience in actually making stuff, selling stuff, inventing stuff. The current business idea needs a lot of tweaking.

"Maybe there is some legs in offering the chair. [There is] some real USP, some real special reason as to why people buy it.

"Wasting time about going into companies and testing employees out, that ain't gonna work. The chair might work."

However, Sugar also shared his "disappointment" with Milligan's brainchild of an assistant service for the mass market, which was at odds with her background in the food and retail industry.

"Helen, you have been exceptional in that you've won so many tasks and understood the plot and shone through," he bemoaned. "You can see that I was not too happy with your business plan idea."

Despite considering Milligan's last-minute pitch of a bakery business, Sugar finally opted to go into partnership with Pellereau after being won over by his entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and past success at getting products into major retailers.

"No longer is Lord Sugar sitting on the opposite side of the table," Pellereau gushed after his win. "We're now on the same piece of paper. I just can't wait to open for business."

Eastwood was the first person axed in tonight's Apprentice final after his e-learning employability service to UK schools was deemed to be at odds with Sugar's desire to start a highly-profitable business.

21-year-old Ma was fired over her "naive" financial projections for her proposed range of natural skincare products, but was described by Sugar as having strong entrepreneurial spirit and being capable of achieving great things.