I’m watching a woman standing in her living room in front of a table stacked with woven faux-leather fanny packs. She’s convincing me to use the next two minutes to score a deal on a bag I definitely do not need. A countdown clock ticks down in the corner screen. It’s a classic QVC scene, but instead of watching TV, I’m on TikTok.
For nearly 40 years, the QVC shopping channel has shown frizzy-haired, middle-aged women hawking clunky charm jewelry and bath towels. During the network’s peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was must-watch television for stay-at-home moms and bargain hunters. (An ageing Marlon Brando reportedly sought – and was denied – a hosting gig in the early aughts.)
By the early aughts, QVC reached 82m households, with 6.7 million people using it to shop, spending $3.9bn on the channel in 2001. Tourists made pilgrimages to the network’s studio, then located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and another retail store it owned in Minnesota’s Mall of America.
The company received a lockdown-era bump early in the pandemic, when people had nothing to do but shop from their homes, but has since experienced a series of crises, such as a drop in sales as the pandemic eased up, supply chain issues, competition with super-cheap Chinese fast-fashion retailers such as Temu, and a warehouse fire costing QVC a half a billion dollars in inventory. Last month, the company laid off 900 employees, or 5% of its workforce, as it consolidated offices in West Chester and St Petersburg, Florida. With cable’s heyday long over, QVC’s new aim is to become “the world’s leading live social shopping content engine”.
In response, the company launched a 24-hour shopping stream on TikTok last week, promising “unmatched capabilities in live content production and discovery-driven retail”. David Rawlinson II, president and CEO of QVC Group Inc, told CNBC last week that he was confident TikTok streams were “the next big thing in retail”.
A shift to the platform might seem risky ahead of a potential US ban of the Chinese video-sharing app and the general uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariff doom spiral. But the long, slow death knell of retail forces companies to make speculative moves.
So, can TikTok save QVC? The channel has more than 502,000 TikTok followers, and has sold more than 298,000 products on the app. Still, anyone expecting a total revamp of QVC’s tried-and-true programming will be disappointed. There are some TikTok tropes here; the hosts broadcast live from what looks like their homes (real-life kitchens or living rooms that look lived in) as opposed to a sterile soundstage. They interact with viewers who leave comments asking questions about the products they’re hawking or how much they love to shop.
But the hosts who led things on a Tuesday afternoon looked very much like the stereotypical QVC shopper: middle-aged and middle American, with French-tipped manicures and tight curls. One host, wearing a black sweater and cross necklace, flogged woven purses that cost about $50 each, speaking continuously about the bags’ materials, construction and uses.
“This is the bag I want to go to Paris with,” she said, holding up a discounted Dooney & Bourke fanny pack. She had a habit of ending sentences with an “OK, guys?” and left absolutely no room for silence or dead air. After reminding viewers that QVC’s TikTok page streams 24 hours a day, she played for nostalgia points, saying: “I grew up watching QVC because my mom was totally addicted to it.” She kept the product in full frame, and her own figure usually only halfway visible.
Scroll down past the video stream, and QVC’s TikTok shop sells many of the same impulse buys one finds on Temu. One scroll through found deals for Birkenstocks, It Cosmetics foundation, a set of planters, a tote bag with wheels and a bird feeder shaped like a cat holding an umbrella.
A midday show, At Home With Angela, featured a content creator named Angela who goes by @countingstars317 on TikTok, where she has just more than 1,800 followers. Angela streamed from a kitchen, selling cereal bowls, bakeware and serving platters. She described herself as “a mom and a wife” who loves flash sales and taco nights. Her stock mostly came from a brand called Temptations, which she credited as one of QVC’s “longest-standing brands”, as it has existed since 2001. She copped to a bit of an addiction to the brand, calling her collection of pieces “a Temptation situation”.
Commentators with names like Judy B, Chopped Mama and Kimmy chimed in, asking Angela to turn on what she called “flash sales”, or two-minute-long segments in which she discounted popular items. The number of viewers stayed at about 100 for a two-hour period.
TikTok urges commentators on live shows to “say something nice”, in an effort to avoid harassment or spam. And, for the most part, people did just that. At one point Angela spoke of her mother, who has dementia. She said she was sad she never asked her mother for her recipe for a cream cheese dip while she could still remember it. It was a moment that could have been touching if it wasn’t in service of hawking a chips-and-dip server.
