Did Joan Rivers give home shopping some respect?

Home shopping TV continues to be one of retail’s quiet giants, and many obits on Joan Rivers gave her credit for being one of the trailblazers of the shopping medium.

Combined merchandise sales of the two leading networks, QVC and HSN, are around $12 billion globally. Home shopping TV appears to attract a niche but devoted audience — about 80 percent female, mainly middle-aged or older — thanks to entertainers, evangelists and storytellers like Ms. Rivers.

Ms. Rivers first sold on QVC in 1990 as an act of desperation. Her husband died of suicide in 1987, the same year her brief late-night show on Fox was cancelled. The show led to a riff with Johnny Carson that derailed her comedy career. In 2004, Ms. Rivers told the Staten Island Advance, "In those days, only dead celebrities went on [QVC]. My career was over. I had bills to pay."

Over the next 24 years, the "Queen Of Mean" became the "Queen Of Home Shopping," selling over $1 billion in jewelry, apparel and beauty products on television, according to QVC.

"We sold over 6,000 products, and there was not a single product she didn’t sign off on," David Dangle, Joan Rivers Worldwide CEO, told the Hollywood Reporter.

joan rivers qvc

Suzanne Somers, of "Three’s Companys" fame, likewise gets credit for bringing viewers to HSN in its earlier days. But the level of celebrity talent has been significantly upgraded in recent years with QVC making waves for signing Isaac Mizrahi in 2008. HSN was able to lure Jenifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy and other stars since Mindy Grossman took over as CEO in 2006.

While both QVC and HSN are seeing greater growth from e-commerce and mobile, both have argued that they’re reaching a broader demographic overall in recent years due to upgraded assortments and efforts to lift the television viewing experience to make it less of an infomercial. Much of the credit goes to their collection of affable, regular hosts that inspire and engage.

With her long QVC career and a selling tagline, "If I can look this fabulous, you can look this fabulous!", Ms. Rivers had a knack for those selling techniques.

In an interview with JCK Magazine, the jewelry trade magazine, in 2006, she complained about the snobbishness she found at many jewelry boutiques. "When you go into a fine jewelry store, you shouldn’t be made to feel like a peasant. I hate it when they take each piece back and put it away before they show the next, like I’m some kind of lowdown person. It should be fun! Fun will make you buy, eventually."

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

What can other retail channels learn from the success of Joan Rivers and celebrity endorsements on home shopping TV? Will celebrities still be critical to the home shopping TV experience with the expansion in digital and mobile shopping?

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Naomi K. Shapiro
Naomi K. Shapiro
9 years ago

What the channels can learn from Joan Rivers was her stated bottom line: Make it fun! It will be interesting to see how digital and mobile can make their shopping experiences fun. eBags has latched onto something special with their eBags Obsession. This program presents a new handbag option, all the while keeping track of over 100 variables and each customer’s individual preferences. For those gift giving or who want to get a head start in the process, they can pre-inform eBags Obsession about their specific color, style or occasion preferences and needs (some of this info from eBags website).

Gordon Arnold
Gordon Arnold
9 years ago

As bandwidth and internet speed increase, the use of internet for commerce of all types will continue to grow. On-demand video streaming of relevant information styles and types will overtake program scheduling like we have on our television networks today. This position is supported not only by e-commerce growth today but by the increases in on-demand viewing and program recorder/playback use. Televisions of the future will decline in scale and scope just like conference rooms and auditoriums. The future of the internet giants is, and will be, in companies that can emulate and compete with the Googles and Alibabas of the world.

Doug Garnett
Doug Garnett
9 years ago

Lesson 1: We shouldn’t be afraid of selling. I find that too many advertisers and marketers somehow expect that products just osmose off the shelves.

Lesson 2: At the same time, Home Shopping Network and QVC don’t reveal the right approach for YOUR store selling. There many more superb ways to do it than are revealed on these networks—approaches that are effective while building your brand.

Lesson 3: Consumers live within a far more vital and exciting life than the dullness most of our advertising and marketing engages. The drive to win awards or impress our bosses too often drives creative choices that are, in truth, stale and dull for consumers. They don’t need top shelf mini-movies that say nothing.

They want to know how what you offer is so compelling that they should go out and shop, right now!

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
9 years ago

Joan Rivers, Suzanne Summers, etc., built enormous empires via these channels. However, there are some great examples of unknown people making a fortune via the same channels with simply a good product at a compelling price. Do celebrities have a head start on the unknown face? Typically they do. That’s just a fact of life. I think whether we like it or not, people follow celebrity lifestyles, and they want to be associated with them and the products they use.

Alan Cooper
Alan Cooper
9 years ago

If you have the right personality representing your products, and you have a passion for them, you can sell anything!

Joan Rivers was a instructional video for sales training. She took the “snobbery” out of fashion and jewelry sales and made her buyers/fans/consumers not only laugh, but got their attention and made the purchasing decisions seemless.

Joan was can’t miss TV, a national treasure, and will be dearly missed.