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QVC Italy to Challenge Mediaset With New Home-Shopping Channel This Year
QVC Inc., the home-shopping channel broadcaster owned by Liberty Media Corp., will start a service in Italy on Oct. 1 to challenge Mediaset SpA’s Mediashopping network.
QVC will broadcast live 17 hour a day on digital terrestrial platforms from its studios near Milan, Steve Hofmann, chief executive officer of QVC Italia, said in an interview. The company will reach about 17 million families at first, the biggest launch in terms of homes reached for QVC, he said. The network will also be aired on Sky Italia SpA, a satellite broadcaster owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
“From a retailer perspective, we saw a gap in the Italian market that we think we can nicely fit,” Hofmann said. “Between the small, independent retailers and the top, luxury chains we see space for us in the middle.”
QVC reaches more than 98 million U.S. households and more than 180 million homes worldwide via cable and satellite, according to its website. The broadcaster, founded in 1986, sells products including clothing, jewelry, electronics and home products. QVC, which has yearly sales of about $7.5 billion, also broadcasts in the U.K., Germany and Japan.
QVC is investing about 100 million euros ($126 million) and hiring 500 employees for its Italian business, Hofmann said. He forecast QVC Italia will break even at the operating level in its third year.
‘Unique Products’
“We’ll have strong, well-known international and Italian brands as well as unique products on sale,” the CEO said. “Our competitors are retailers, not just television shopping companies.”
Mediaset, the Broadcaster of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, controls Mediashopping, which sells merchandise through a digital TV channel and via phone, catalogues and the Internet. Revenue at Mediashopping jumped 73 percent to 71.6 million euros last year, leading to break-even a year earlier than planned. It had more than 2 million customers last year.
“Finally also in Italy the mail order market has reached a level of quality that has existed in other western countries for years,” Rodrigo Cipriani, chief of Mediashopping, said in March.
“Mediashopping has started to break the mould of TV sales in Italy,” Hofmann said. “Having two strong, credible operators is better for both of us and helps establish credibility.”
The CEO said QVC is “constantly exploring opportunities” for starting channels and is looking at countries such as China, France and Canada even if nothing has been decided yet.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chiara Remondini in Milan at cremondini@bloomberg.net
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