Naturally, a company this closely tied to the decades-long American consumer boom has been hit hard by the recession. The company’s allure is so powerful that Marlon Brando reportedly sought to become one of its celebrity presenters during his final, cash-strapped, obese, and depressed years. QVC’s merchandising power has nurtured blockbuster brands like Spanx body shapers-and whole sub-industries that help entrepreneurs get their products onto the shopping network (or at least claim to). Since then, QVC-it stands for “Quality, Value, Convenience”-has become one of America’s largest jewelry retailers and a leading importer of Irish goods, and has earned other superlatives too numerous to elaborate. Founded by the same man who started the Franklin Mint, the company began broadcasting on November 24, 1986, when it sold $7,400 worth of merchandise. This power to turn the most resistant foe into a QVC shopper has made the network one of the most effective retailing machines ever invented. Now that we each had a color-coded personal set, my mother explained, the McArdle women would never again tussle over the Tupperware. ![]() Somehow, though, our family came to own three jumbo sets of Lock and Lock storage containers, in Kiwi, Fuchsia, and Coral-one for each of us, and one for my sister. “You want me to buy something from the television?” Her tone suggested icy Thanksgiving dinners and rewritten wills.Īnd to be fair, 30 minutes later, she had not bought any flatware. ![]() While researching this article-that is, watching QVC in earnest-I made the mistake of suggesting to my television-hating mother that she should tune in to a presentation of some Reed & Barton flatware, which she’d wanted to buy for a cousin’s wedding gift. ![]() And-odds are-has it at a price you can’t resist. You are a discriminating shopper, a person of real substance, a unique snowflake. You are not one of those people, trying to plug your gaping inner emptiness with cut-rate consumer goods. Y ou may not know it yet, but you want to buy something from QVC.
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