QVC bets on Tiktok to help relaunch their live shopping business

QVC group Lancing non -stop trade flows live on Tiktok in order to relaunch its activities and expand its audience.

From Wednesday, the hosts from the QVC television networks will also be presented on the application in addition to the creators of Tiktok.

QVC is best known for its live shopping networks live QVC and HSN (formerly Home Shopping Network) which once captured a large band of viewers and consumers. It also offers online streaming and retail options. But as the company seeks to expand its audience and to reverse its activities, it focuses on social networks.

While live purchases on social networks, namely Tiktok, exploded in China, it was slow to take off in the United States and the partnership occurs while the future of Tiktok in the United States is uncertain.

However, the partnership announced that Wednesday is based on the previous team of QVC with Tiktok. QVC products have been available via the Tiktok store for August, almost a year after the application has introduced the live and shopable experience to its users in the United States

Since its launch on the Tiktok store, the company said that more than 74,000 Tiktok creators had presented QVC products on their videos and live broadcasting. Wednesday’s announcement will be sure to develop this, said David Rawlinson II, president and chief executive officer of QVC Group Inc.

“Everyone is talking about the next great thing in retail for five or 10 years, but it has never been struck,” said Rawlinson. “I think it’s the start of the strike really. And it’s the bet Tiktok. It’s our bet.”

QVC Group – which is part of QVC Group Inc. and controlled by the media magnate John Malone – aims to do more than bringing its long -standing activities of constant shopping on television to social media.

The agreement comes as the company recently concluded a recovery plan, known as Project Athens, after Rawlinson described as a “perfect storm” of problems.

At the height of the pandemic, QVC companies have increased sales and audience, such as many retailers and media companies. But the deposit was stiff while orders at the Housewife and Consumers began to spend on live events and traveling rather than retail.

QVC problems were then amplified. More consumers cut the cord and fled the Pay TV pack, weighing on the company’s television networks. The retail industry also had to deal with supply chain problems and increased competition in online purchases of the rise of TEMU and others.

Things worsened for the company in December 2021, months after Rawlinson took the lead of QVC Group Inc. A deadly fire torn the Caroline execution center from the north of the company. QVC has lost half a billion dollars in inventory, said Rawlinson.

“In a way, I had the impression of having been hired to transform the company, but due to this perfect storm of events, the first job turned out to save the business,” said Rawlinson.

Thanks to a series of cost reduction measures, QVC has seen its profitability improve and its ease of debt load. However, the transformation is far from complete. Rawlinson noted during an investor call in February that QVC has not yet “made stable income”, and that it will be its main objective in the future.

The television hearing was pronounced. By comparing 2024 to 2018, the main QVC and HSN channels reached 44% and 47% less houses, Rawlinson said at the February call.

Last week, the company said that it would dismiss around 900 employees and consolidate its operations in its head office in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The partnership with Tiktok comes a few days after the company published its annual report to shareholders, which noted the accent on social networks and efforts to move the company.

“While traditional television decreases and a mixture of video platforms has a larger part of customers’ attention, we have to dispatch our extension beyond television to find growth. Our strategy is to transform the QVC group into a live social business company,” wrote QVC Group Inc. in a letter to shareholders in March.

In the letter, QVC said that it would “intensify” its efforts on social networks and streaming to disconnect $ 1.5 billion in execution income from these platforms over the next three years.

“Social is only the natural evolution of what we have always done,” said Rawlinson.

The public and QVC buyers are generally biased by women and over 50. Last year, CNBC reported that the company had signed an agreement to add American pickleball to its platforms to capitalize on this audience and find new avenues to transform its business.

Tiktok has experienced explosive growth in the United States and the company said it has 170 million users. But his fate in the country is not clear.

The application of social media belonging to Chinese is again looking at a deadline which could be effectively prohibited on April 5, coming from a national security law initially signed by former president Joe Biden who demands that the mother company Bytedance to give in its American operations.

The initial deadline was January 19, but President Donald Trump signed an executive decree that granted bytedance 75 more days to sell the American part of his activities.

Although the future remains uncertain, the creators seem carefully optimistic this time around the fact that Tiktok will remain in the United States, CNBC reported on Tuesday. Trump has since said that he could reduce prices on China to help advance an agreement in which Bytedance comes out of American operations.

Even with the possibility of a ban in the United States, Rawlinson said that the future with the partnership on Tiktok Shop was the best bet for QVC affairs.

“Tiktok has a user base very widely penetrated in the United States, we know a lot of our customers, and our future customers, are there, and we know that purchases are developing and developing very quickly there,” said Rawlinson.

“So we had the impression that it was the right way to try to change the way shopping is done in the United States, this is the full calculation for us. We have not tried guessing the future of Tiktok,” he added.

– Jonathan Vanian of CNBC contributed to this article.