QVC Turns 30: How the Network Brought Shopping to the Small Screen

Photo: QVC

Gather ’round, children, and let us tell you of a distant era before Amazon, Trunk Club, and Harry’s allowed you to purchase various and sundry items on the Internet — at the same time you were checking your email and vanishing down a YouTube rabbit hole. At first, people bought their household items, as well as Treat Yo Self merchandise, in these ancient edifices called stores. But then, 30 years ago this month, television gifted us with another way to shop. In June 1986, entrepreneur Joseph Segel founded the QVC network in West Chester, Pa., where it resides to this day, in a state-of-the-art studio that reaches viewers in seven countries around the world.

Viewers didn’t get their first look at QVC’s wares until November 1986 when the channel flickered to life to pitch the public on the Windsor Shower Companion, a water-resistant AM/FM radio that you could rock out to while rinsing off. But the network has still scheduled a summer birthday celebration for June 11 and 12. The weekend-long anniversary broadcast will include 48 hours of viewers’ most beloved shows, a special Super Saturday LIVE telecast benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund Alliance, and low sale prices on select items. The festivities will continue throughout June, with a “30 Days, 30 Discoveries” sale, as well as a birthday sweepstakes with weekly prizes in addition to a $30,000 grand prize.

“We know there’s a lot of customers that have been with us for quite a while, and they’ll love to reflect on some of the moments that have happened over the years,” Doug Rose, QVC’s senior vice president of brand, tells Yahoo TV. “Back in the day when QVC was just starting up, I think there was a lot of doubt that a retail business could make a space for itself in a television landscape. I think maybe TV has learned a little bit about how to manage an audience in more real-time ways. You look at some of the more interactive forms of television, like American Idol, where there’s live voting happening. We basically were a precursor of that 30 years ago.”

With the help of Rose and popular on-air hosts Jane Treacy and Amy Stran, we’ve picked some key moments from QVC’s three-decade history to revisit before its birthday weekend commences. Consider it a gift to the network where we’ve all bought so many gifts for others … and ourselves.

Yuletide Cheer (1987)
Although QVC launched during the holiday season of 1986, its first major test as a Christmas retailer came the following year, when they were still trying to make sure supply kept up with demand. Treacy, who has been with the network since its 1986 launch, has vivid memories of that intense period. “At that time, all of us had been trained to answer the phone, so I remember getting off the air, and there was a light in the ceiling that would rotate and flash. That meant ‘All hands on deck!’ So I would pick up a phone and say, ‘Hello, welcome to QVC. This is Jane. May I take your order?’”

On-air host Jane Treacy has been with QVC since its 1986 launch. (Photo: QVC)

These days, Treacy and the rest of the hosts don’t have to pull double duty during the holiday season or any other time of year. But that experience gave her an early taste of the behind-the-scenes camaraderie, as well as the direct connection to viewers, that’s defined her three-decade-and-counting tenure. “It’s felt like home for me from the moment I started doing it,” says the host, who transitioned from a background in TV news into, as she describes herself, a “jack-of-all-trades” at QVC. “This is a rare job in television that I think gets easier and gets better as we age — like a fine wine.”

Enter Joan (1990)
Many celebrities have passed through QVC’s studios over the decades, from Ellen DeGeneres and Paula Abdul to 50 Cent and Nicole Richie. But none are as closely identified with the network as Joan Rivers, whose clothing and beauty products are reported to have pulled in an estimated $1 billion during her lifetime. As Rose tells us, the decision to bring a celebrity into the QVC fold isn’t one that’s taken lightly: “It’s more typical to find people who are real live inventors with a great product that they’re proud of. Media personalities are part of the mix, but they’re not a dominant part of the mix. We don’t ever want to get out of balance.” There’s no question that Rivers made an immediate impact both on and off air, though. Rose says he’s heard stories of her dogs freely roaming the QVC hallways. “It tended to drive our production teams a little crazy,” he says, laughing. “But, again, it was very much true to Joan’s personality.”

Joy to the World (1992)
QVC got its big-screen close-up in 2015 when the world’s biggest movie star, Jennifer Lawrence, played Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano in the David O. Russell film Joy. A self-starter from a young age, Mangano dreamed up her patented mop — which distinguished itself from the competition with a signature continuous loop of cotton that kept hands dry — in 1990 and marketed it around her Long Island neighborhood until landing a spotlight on QVC, where she went on-camera to sell her own product. (In 2000, Mangano moved over to the Home Shopping Network.)

While Joy obviously takes certain liberties with Mangano’s experience at QVC, Rose says that he enjoyed it as a “time capsule” of an era when the network was still learning how to bring new voices and personalities into the mix, even those with little on-camera experience. “Today, we insist that each on-air guest goes through a rigorous guest-training program,” he explains. “We really insist that people speak to what makes their product great and why they’re proud to be associated with it.” Treacy worked alongside Mangano in the early ’90s (she appears in the ]infomercial above) and remembers those days fondly. “We had a lot of laughs together. There were elements [in Joy] that were somewhat like our starting days, but certainly not an authentic reproduction of what it was like.”

QVC host Amy Stran. (Photo: QVC)

Digital Dollars (1996)
Ten years after launching on television screens, QVC took its first steps into the digital world, powering up the online domain, IQVC.com. (The name was later shortened to QVC.com in 2001.) In the decade since, the Internet has become a core part of QVC’s business, not just in terms of sales but also audience engagement. Both Treacy and Stran, who joined the network seven years ago, maintain active online presences on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, even allowing viewers (or, as Stran calls them, friends) a small peek into their personal lives. “When I had my child two years ago, you would have thought that 10,000 people were at that hospital with me. The second I put that picture of her on Facebook, my page was just this page of love from people who only see me on TV.” Treacy says that she’s provided shopping advice via social media as well. “Someone posted a picture of a shoe that she loved on Facebook, but it was $800. I found something at QVC.com that I thought had a very similar vibe in a similar color, and we were selling it for $89, so I sent her that item number. That aspect of social media is really exciting to me.”

The QVC Birthday Celebration Weekend airs June 11 and 12 on QVC.