How are items sourced on qvc?

I have often wondered whether companies approach QVC or the other way round? I have many questions.

Are they desperate and feel QVC will enable them to sell more items? Musical artistes spring to mind especially.

Do QVC buy thousands and thousands of the items or are they ordered in to meet demand?

Lots of the American companies I had never even heard of till I started to tune in and obviously as the Mother company is American it stands to reason that they would make sure their own country is represented.

I have noticed that more and more though QVC is flogging its own label so to speak as if other companies aren't bothering with them so much. Northern Nights is their own and Cooks Essentials and one of the meat companies, Centigrade and no doubt others.

There again, do you think that all the designers actually own their companies or do some of them sub-contract so to speak for QVC? Kim Mendelson, Casual & Co, Artscapes - I have often wondered if these are designed for television pieces.

Does anyone on the inside know what the buying structure is please?

This doesn't really answer your questions but it's quite interesting http://realbusiness.co.uk/news/selling-on-qvc--the-superjam-experience

I like a lot of the items sold by QVC but the fashion is dire, although it sells well. No accounting for taste but if it makes a profit QVC will sell it, I guess with their 'no quibble guarentee' they only use suppliers whot have a good returns policy where they absorb the loss for used items that connot be sold on. The synthetic materials make me think the 'fashion' garments cost pennies to produce and the mark-up is huge. As for the musicians, I'd say their managers have struck a deal.

Big brands like Elemis,Decleor will be approached by QVC. Smaller brands will approach QVC, have meetings etc to see if its worth QVC while. I know someone who distributes a beauty item and approached QVC. They have to supply and pay their own guest presenter to appear.

petpixie said:

This doesn't really answer your questions but it's quite interesting http://realbusiness.co.uk/news/selling-on-qvc--the-superjam-experience

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, very interesting

I only know about Elemis. Elemis approached QVC not the other way around. Elemis commits to supply QVC with a certain quantity for each item number and QVC commits to selling that number. Elemis has to bear the cost of all returns. A couple of years ago 50% of all Elemis sales in the UK were made via QVC. QVC was responsible for getting Elemis to a completely new set of customers as well as increasing sales to existing customers.

I was lucky enough to go to the Beauty Bash and attended AY's talk on beauty products which was really interesting. She said that companies send Q stuff all the time and it can take a minimum of 6 months before they will even consider selling on Q. They have to go through trading standards to check what they can and can't say. There is one american guest who is a Dr of something but can't use his title as it isn't reconised over here!!

I worked for a large company selling stationery products in Europe. QVC contacted our marketing department, told us what they wanted, how many they wanted and what price they would pay for them. Because it was such a large order, there wasn't much option other than to just say yes and get it done.