'Joy' shines spotlight on home shopping

The biggest nail-biting moment of David O. Russell's Joy, a loose biopic of home-shopping mogul Joy Mangano that opened Friday, comes midway through the movie.

Armed with her self-wringing Miracle Mop, Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) goes on TV to pitch her invention: visibly nervous at first, but quickly gaining confidence as an off-camera ticker surges with sales.

During that lively first QVC appearance in 1992, Mangano sold 18,000 mops in just 20 minutes. Since then, the Long Island entrepreneur — now a fixture on competing network HSN — has become the reigning queen of practical household products, including her non-slip Huggable Hangers (she's sold 678 million of them).

Though Joy shines a spotlight on Mangano, she's just one of countless inventors to create an empire through home-shopping networks HSN, which started as a Florida radio show in 1977, and QVC, founded in 1986.

"When cable was first coming into people's homes, this was something totally new: buying things from the privacy of their own homes, even things they didn't particularly need," TV historian Tim Brooks says. Unlike catalogs, product usage was "demonstrated on the air, and the two networks made increasing use of personalities and celebrities," including Lori Greiner, Suzanne Somers, Paula Abdul, Lisa Robertson, and Joan Rivers (played by her daughter, Melissa, in Joy).

Behind the scenes at QVC studios in West Chester, Pa., and HSN headquarters in St. Petersburg, Fla., phone and online sales are tracked minute by minute. When orders start to slow, a product is pulled and the next demonstration is queued up.

But with the advent of online retailers, the networks have had to adopt more digitally focused and star-powered strategies. HSN's customer base is 83% women, so it makes sense that celebrities such as Serena Williams, Sofia Vergara and Iman hawk their respective clothing, fragrance and jewelry lines on the channel. In the three months ending Sept. 30, 40% of net sales were made online and through mobile platforms, although that doesn't diminish the importance of HSN's TV presence.

"Can you imagine how much another retailer would love a 24-hour commercial for their digital platforms? It's a marketing driver," says HSN president Bill Brand. TV demonstrations are incorporated as videos on the website's product pages, which adds a visual component for online shoppers. "A lot of people can sell stuff online, but very few people can do it with content and storytelling and bring it to life."

The networks don't depend on ratings, though more viewers typically mean more sales. QVC pulled in $8.8 billion in net sales last year and shipped 173 million products globally. On average, 90% of purchases are made by repeat customers.

For QVC and HSN, "the key to success is not a lot of viewers, but a group of very intense repeat buyers," Brooks says. "In the early days, there were jokes and parodies and stigmas attached to (the channels). Now, they're part of the woodwork. They're a perfect example of the niche ability of cable television and being able to make a very nice business with a small group."