Dreams” by adding “Shark Tank” star
Daymond John. The program airs on the
first Monday of every month at 7 p.m. ET
from August through December.
In the show, John travels around the
United States seeking new products that
could eventually be launched on HSN,
which reaches 95 million American
homes.
“We’re a 38-year-old business that
knows how to tell stories to consumers,”
HSN’s president, Bill Brand, told Entre-
preneur. “That’s something you cannot
get anywhere else. It’s the ultimate inter-
active experience for entrepreneurs. They
EVINE Live, formerly ShopNBC, also
understands the power of people, espe-
cially people who already have an audi-
ence — something Mark Bozek, CEO of
EVINE knows well. That’s why he’s add-
ing these kinds of people to his channel
— people viewers already like and feel a
connection to. “Brands with fans, I like
to say,” Bozek says.
An example: earlier this year EVINE
aired its first “Before & After Beauty
Day,” a live 24-hour broadcast celebrating
what’s hot in the beauty world. One of
the featured brands was Beekman 1802,
a natural bath-and-body collection cre-
ated by Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent
Ridge, the stars of the Cooking Channel’s
The duo also launched a cookbook
that generated record sales, as well as
penned a memoir of their
farm life, “The Bucolic
Plague,” which became a
national best seller. And in
2012, more than 12 million
Americans (and millions
more around the globe)
watched as they went from
ultimate underdogs to winning CBS’s
multiple Emmy-winning “The Amazing
Race.”
“They have this huge, existing fan
base and social network audience, and
that helps us create retail reality brands,”
Bozek credits the feat to Thom Beers,
who’s on EVINE’s board and a former
CEO of FremantleMedia North America,
as well as the producer behind “Deadliest
Catch.”
Trust Is a Must
The other power player in home shopping, QVC, agrees that people and their
personalities are key in keeping audiences
engaged.
Doug Rose, senior vice president of
brand and communications at QVC, says
his channel’s personalities, guest celebri-
ties, and hosts use their storytelling and
demonstrations to “bring brands to life.”
For Rose, though, it all boils down to
one word: trust.
“The secret to QVC’s sustained
growth is really no secret: it’s all about
trust. Every decision we make is ultimate-
ly governed by a concern for what’s right
for the customer in the long term,” Rose
says. “We know that while the productiv-
ity of our next five minutes will be driven
by how compelling our product presenta-
tion is, the productivity of our next five
years will be driven by how our customer
feels about the whole experience of shop-
ping with us. More than 90 percent of
QVC’s annual revenues each year come
from repeat customers — people who
have come to know and trust us.”
Be that as it may, QVC knows to keep
growing, it must expand beyond just TV.
Home shopping channels have created
many apps for phones and mobile devices
— HSN’s new app for the iPhone lets
viewers watch live, check programming
schedules, and engage with hosts, celebri-
ties and fellow shoppers. Also, it has, of
course, added muscle to its websites.
QVC took a big step in that direc-
tion this fall when it bought flash sales
site zulily LLC for $2.4 billion. zulily sells
maternity gear, baby clothes, and other
products aimed at millennial moms.
It launched in 2010 and went public
in 2013. Its IPO;made a billionaire of
founder Mark Vadon, who made his first
fortune with online jewelry retailer Blue
Nile.
zulily’s pitch to shoppers wasn’t much
different from QVC’s: they both offer
HOME SHOPPING
CHANNELS
“JTV Rock Star Designer,” a reality show
that pitted five jewelry designers against
each other for cash and prizes, expanded
Jewelry Television’s viewership.
EVINE Live’s first “Before & After
Beauty Day” was a live 24-hour
broadcast featuring Beekman 1802
creators and reality TV stars Josh
Kilmer-Purcell and Dr. Brent Ridge.
