QVC Lost the Home Shoppers to Social Media Influencers
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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the worldAmericas+1 212 318 2000EMEA+44 20 7330 7500Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the worldAmericas+1 212 318 2000EMEA+44 20 7330 7500Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000US Stocks:The cable-TV seller faces bankruptcy as TikTok Shop and other video platforms take over.The QVC shopping channel features live sales sessions and call-in ordering.Last week, when news broke that QVC Group Inc. had filed for bankruptcy protection in an effort to shed $5 billion in debt, it might have been the first time you’d thought about televised home shopping in a while. The company, which operates both the QVC and HSN networks, feels in some ways like a relic of the near past—a time when average Americans didn’t carry a portal to unfathomable abundance in their pocket at every waking moment. But now most US households have an Amazon Prime subscription and access to a near-endless array of product recommendations and reviews online. Who, exactly, still wants to buy from some lady on TV rapturously extolling the virtues of a rainbow rack of sporty separates?QVC has struggled mightily in recent years—with declining network viewership, stiff competition for its e-commerce operation, difficulty wooing younger shoppers to an old name—so it’s not quite right to describe it as a victim of its own success. What it might be, though, is a victim of its own insights. Decades before affiliate links and livestreaming platforms made all of us potential salespeople, home-shopping TV understood that a skilled messenger could sell almost anything to bored people alone on the couch. The products—kitchen gadgets, cosmetics, business-casual blouses—were largely beside the point. QVC might be in dire financial straits, but we’re all living in the consumer world that its networks built.