QVC bets on Tiktok to help the live shopping business revival

QVC Group To bring business back and expand your audience, we launch our first non-stop live shopping stream in Tiktok, USA.

Starting Wednesday, the hosts of QVC’s TV network will also be featured on the app in addition to Tiktok creators.

QVC is best known for its live shopping television networks QVC and HSN (formerly home shopping network), which once won a massive band for viewers and consumers. It also offers streaming and online retail options. However, the company is focusing on social media as it appears to broaden its audience and turn its business around.

Live shopping on social media, namely Tikk, exploded in China, but it is slow to take off in the US and the uncertain future of Tikkk in the US creates a partnership.

Still, the partnership was announced on Wednesday and was built on a previous team with QVC’s Tiktok. It also provides Tiktok Shop with first constant live stream of shopping content. QVC products will be available from the Tiktok shop starting in August, almost a year after the app introduced live shopping experiences for US users.

Since its launch at the Tiktok Shop, the company said that more than 74,000 Tiktok creators have featured QVC products in shopable videos and live streams. David Rawlinson II, president and CEO of QVC Group Inc, is confident that it will certainly expand its announcement on Wednesday.

“Everyone has talked about how this is the next big thing in retail for five or ten years, and it’s never been a hit,” said Rawlinson. “I think this was the beginning of what really hits. That’s the Tiktok bet. That’s our bet.”

QVC Group (part of QVC Group Inc. and managed by media tycoon John Malone) aims to do more than bringing a long-standing business of constant live shopping, from television to social media.

The deal comes when Lowlinson recently concluded a turnaround plan known as Project Athens after what he called the “perfect storm” in question.

During the pandemic, QVC’s business, like many retailers and media companies, saw a surge in sales and audience. However, the drop-off was steep as home orders were lifted and consumers began spending it on live events and travel rather than retail stores.

The QVC problem has been amplified. More consumers cut the code and weighed the company’s television network and escaped the pay TV bundle. The retail industry has also had to deal with supply chain issues and increased competition in online shopping since the rise of Temu and others.

Things got worse for the company in December 2021, months after Rawlinson took the helm of QVC Group Inc. QVC lost $5 billion in stock, Rawlinson said.

“I felt like I was hired to transform the company, but due to this complete event storm, it turned out that my first job was to save the company,” said Rawlinson.

Through a series of cost-cutting measures, QVC has improved profitability and eased debt load. Still, the conversion is far from complete. Rawlinson said in a February Investor call that QVC may still be “not achieving stable revenues” and that will be its main focus for the future.

TV viewers have been declared drop-offs. Comparing 2024 and 2018, the main channels of QVC and HSN reached 44% and 47% homes, respectively, Rawlinson said in a February call.

Last week, the company said it would fire around 900 employees and consolidate its operations at its Westchester headquarters in Pennsylvania.

The partnership with Tiktok comes just days after the company released its annual report to shareholders. I found this to focus on social media and efforts to change businesses.

“As the decline of traditional television and the combination of video platforms attracts customer attention, we need to expand beyond television to find growth. Our strategy is to turn QVC Group into a live social shopping company,” QVC Group Inc. wrote a letter to shareholders in March.

In the letter, QVC said it will “strengthen” its efforts on social media and streaming, notching $1.5 billion in run-rate revenue from these platforms over the next three years.

“Social is just a natural evolution of what we’ve always done,” Rawlinson said.

QVC viewers and shoppers usually distort women and more than 50 people. Last year, CNBC reported that the company had signed a deal to add US pickleballs to its platform in order to find a new path to use its audiences to change its business.

Tiktok is experiencing explosive growth in the US, and it says it has 170 million users. However, its fate in this country remains unknown.

The Chinese-owned social media app is staring once again at the deadline that was effectively banned on April 5th. This stems from the national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden, who calls for parent company ordinances to sell American businesses.

The original deadline was January 19th, but President Donald Trump has signed an executive order allowing another 75 days to be sold out the US portion of the business.

The future remains uncertain, but this time it appears to be cautiously optimistic that Tiktok will remain in the US this time, CNBC reported Tuesday. Since then, Trump has said it could reduce China’s tariffs to advance the deal to withdraw US operations.

Even if there is a possibility of a US ban, Rawlinson said moving forward with partnerships at Tiktokshop is the best bet for QVC’s business.

“Tiktok has a very widespread user base in the US where many customers know a lot of customers, and there are future customers out there. And we know that shopping is growing very quickly in a very interesting way,” says Rawlinson.

“So I felt that was the right way to change the way shopping is done in the US, which is the perfect calculation for us. We didn’t try to guess the future of Tiktok,” he added.

– Jonathan Vanian of CNBC contributed to this article.