QVC Lost the Home Shoppers to Social Media Influencers

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.