Attention TV Shoppers!

Attention TV Shoppers!

There’s a bazaar of goods for sale on the tube. Not all are bargains

Those 24-hour shopping shows are luring more than chronic TV browsers. Viewers are shelling out billions to buy a vast array of goods. The variety touted by the shows is immense: autographed baseballs, kitchen storage containers, exercise bikes, floating cordless phones, you name it. The quality ranges from phone gems to genuine diamonds, from trendy fashions to fine silk suits.

The two big players in the business, the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and QBC Network, each sell about $2 billion a year. Catalog I, the cable shopping channel developed by Time Warner and Spiegel, pitched more upscale goods from the likes of Williams-Sonoma, Neiman Marcus, and the Bombay Company.

There are a few bargains to be found on TV sales shows. An 18-karat gold bracelet, for example, was once sold on QVC for $278.00. An independent appraiser later valued it at at more than $600. But recent research by Consumer Reports found that a number of goods selling on QVC and HSN could be bought for less in local stores. And Arch-brand quilt selling for $147.72 on QVC, for example was going for $99 at a department store.

TV shopping and a little panda looking through a window. Photo by Elena

Clothing is though to buy from television. Getting those form-fitting jeans to fit your form is hard to do without trying them on. As a result, TV shoppers return an average 20% of items they buy, compared with only 3 percent for store shoppers. Jewelry is an easier buy. The networks will send callers sizing kits to help deter,ine ring sies and necklace lengths.

QVC and HSN use different styles to hawk their goods. Hosts at HSN sell in a high-pressure frenzy. They add to the pressure by putting deadlines on prices – “Buy now or cry later.” Hosts at QVC, which stands for quality, value, and convenience, use a softer sell.

All the TV shopping shows have mastered some form of celebrity sales, though. Celebrities entertain viewers as they pitch their wares, often taking on-air calls from the audience. Even the non-famous hosts are becoming mini-celebrities. At QVC hosts receive an average 500 letters every week. At HSN, the average is 1,000. Meanwhile, the stars are striking gold. Joan Rivers has raked peddling her line of jewelry on QVC. Vanna White has sold more than $25 million in pumps, clothes, and jewelry on the HSN, Ivana Trump’s initial appearance on HSN drew such huge clothing sales that the network ran out of Ivana fashions to sell.

(text published in 1994, in Dollars & Sense).