The Covid-19 pandemic has been a trial for retailers with large brick-and-mortar footprints and under-developed e-commerce sites, but for QurateQRTEA Retail Inc., the parent of QVC and HSN, among other platforms, the health crisis forced consumers to remain at home, where they were captive audiences for its livestream and virtual shopping and other formats that combine storytelling with sales.
Qurate’s results for the first quarter of 2021, released today, are the best since the company’s launch in 2018. Revenue increased 14% to $3.3 billion, QxH revenue rose 8%, while QVC International revenue increased 22%. Qurate said it’s seeing overseas broadly similar category trends to what’s popular in the U.S., but with a higher level of performance. Zulily, an off-price platform, had a 19% jump in revenue, and the home-oriented Cornerstone’s revenue leapt 41% in the quarter ended March 31.
Metrics in the first quarter showed that Qurate grew traditional TV viewership, with more than 25% growth in visitors to its online properties, 20% growth in online sessions, and a 6% increase in total minutes viewed on the five TV networks.
“Consumers continue to be interested in all things home, but we’re finally seeing her start to reengage with apparel – activewear, denim, swimwear – and she’s starting to get back to classic and contemporary products as well,” said Mike George, president and CEO of Qurate Retail Inc.
Calling out areas in the home category, George cited continued strong growth in culinary products, especially gourmet food, and a huge interest in gardening and plants. “We had enormous results in the gardening category,” he said. “We take her via livestream to different nurseries across the country and to backyards of gardening guests.”
Connected fitness is a trend that panned out for Qurate, and consumer electronics returned to strong growth, with customers interested in productivity with laptops. All things audio and smart-phone related, and smart home products, continued to be in strong demand.
“Beauty is the one category that’s a little more uneven,” George said. “Beauty is kind of a tale of two cities. Color cosmetics is very challenged because masks are in the way. Things that are really strong include at home spa treatments. Multi-cultural beauty is a real area of focus. Customization is a trend with things like customized hair color solutions. They’re replacing the experience you would get in the salon with customization with at-home salon treatments.”
Qurate recently launched a new beauty content collaboration with Byrdie, a shoppable online and mobile beauty platform. Livestream quarterly programming, called the Byrdie Beauty Hour, helps viewers discover the best products featuring editorial insights and products curated by Byrdie and QVC. The content is available on Facebook, YouTube, QVC.com, QVC 2, OTT devices, Byrdie.com and Byrdie’s social media accounts.
“We think our business in the last year has shown that we’re more relevant than ever for a couple reasons,” George said. “Post-pandemic, we’re moving into a fundamentally more favorable environment. What the pandemic has done is accelerate all things digital – online shopping and digital video streaming. The consumer is much more comfortable and engaged in digital, so we win as she spends more time online shopping, and we win as she spends more time in the digital video streaming space.
“A more digitally-savvy consumer who is more engaged in buying a wider array of things for the home and now is starting to replenish her fashion wardrobe as well, and that bodes really well for us,” George added. “We’re benefitting from multiple years of investments, because while we didn’t anticipate the pandemic, we did anticipate a world that was moving more toward digital and more toward live streaming.”
Over the last couple years, Qurate expanded its livestreaming footprint and leaned into scaling its performance and original content. “All those things are working in our favor, and give us confidence in our ability to meet the consumer at this moment based on the trends we’re seeing,” George said.
With the diversity of streaming platforms available to consumers, Qurate has focused on maintaining a meaningful presence everywhere customers have access to video content, which includes six YouTube channels.
“We’re creating a lot of original content for a YouTube audience,” George said. “It tends to be a little more tutorial and influencer-focused. We’ve had strong results on Facebook, where we have 400 hours of live content a week. As Facebook starts to experiment with live shopping, we’re a large partner. On Instagram’s IGTV, we’re working with vendors and taking advantage of vendors’ customer bases, along with our own, to tell stories on Instagram.”
Qurate is a year into active experimentation on TikTok. “We’re trying to find the formula for 15- to 30-second influencer segments,” George said. “It’s a very quick TikTok experience. In some cases, we’re leveraging our own personalities.”
The company is producing the same amount of content, or more, for the traditional QVC and HSN platforms, where it has five broadcast networks. Some of the content is repurposed for streaming platforms. In addition, Qurate is creating a lot of additional content for the streaming services.
“We’ve never produced more content than we are now,” George said. “One of the advantages we have is this huge scale in producing content. We’re going to bring that to life.”
Qurate’s own streaming app is available on Roku and Amazon Fire. “It’s a good microcosm of where we’re going,” George said. “You’ll find the QVC and HSN broadcast networks. In addition there’s all this short and long-form on-demand content that you can access. It becomes a universal shopping experience where the consumer can select the content she wants to see.”
Qurate launched an original series with Chef Curtis Stone a few months ago. Each 30-minute segment features Stone traveling and cooking, with no product sales. “The idea is to get someone who may not be a QVC or HSN customer to check out the streaming app and we get them excited about other product offerings as they start to navigate through the streaming app,” George said.
Qurate sees consumers continuing to fragment their viewing time across many different platforms and a lot of devices. “We have to be wherever she goes,” said George. “We’ll see growth across social platforms and we’ll invest heavily in the streaming app, which will be a big driver of growth.
“But it doesn’t stop there,” George said. “We’re working with smart TV manufacturers to integrate our programming directly into their streaming offerings. You won’t need any interface, you just turn on the smart TV, and you’ll have some unique QVC and HSN experiences with the smart TV platform. We’re focused on building the technology. There’s no shortage of things to invest in, building technology, building platforms, and building content. We’re focused on meeting consumers in all of these places.”
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