Now showing - TV shopping channels

Entrepreneur, April, 1996

Tv shopping channels, a marketing medium of choice for many entrepreneurs in the United States, are now also proving to be a first-class ticket abroad for entrepreneurial exporters.

These channels offer access to a prominent, organized marketing effort overseas: QVC alone reaches

4 million households in the United Kingdom. The video retailing concept, born in the United States, has spread to other countries as well. Home Order Television in Germany and the SkyShop network in the Phil-ippines advertise American prod- ucts to huge international audiences.

According to Francis Edwards of QVC Inc. in West Chester, Penn-sylvania, QVC's international audiences are remarkably similar to the viewers who watch in the United States in terms of their incomes, educations and lifestyles. He says succeeding on overseas home shopping networks hinges not so much on a knowledge of foreign demographics but rather on having a feel for what products are selling well in other countries. Space-saving fitness equipment, home gyms and non-stick cookware, for example, are hot- sellers in Europe and Asia, while car wax is selling well in Japan. In France, consumers love sterling silver and have an affinity for 18 karat gold jewelry--14 karat just won't do.

Although most American entrepreneurs begin their careers on home shopping channels here in the United States and make the leap overseas after they're established at home, that's not a hard-and-fast rule. Another piece of good news for entrepreneurs: You don't need a sizable staff or a household name to get your products shown on a home shopping channel.

In fact, small-business owners may actually have an edge over larger companies. Edwards says QVC is particularly interested in working with entrepreneurs who have limited product distribution because "it's an added plus for us if [the product is] not generally available elsewhere. If we offer a product that's available through a retailer, we have less exclusivity."

If you have a unique product and stay abreast of trends in other countries, your company is likely to benefit from exposure on international home shopping networks. Says Edwards, "A good marketing concept in the United States usually works elsewhere."

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The following companies have established overseas home shoppingchannels that are open to entrepreneurs and their products.

COMPANY SEEN IN

Home Order Television, Munich, Germany Europe QVC Inc., West Chester, Pennsylvania U.S., England,Scotland,Ireland SkyShop, Makita, Philippines Philippines

RELATED ARTICLE: OVERSEAS SENSATION

When joy mangano vacationed in Aruba last year, she felt like a movie star. People she'd never met approached her and called her by name--they'd seen her demonstrating two of the products she invented on QVC.

Mangano, 39, got the Miracle Mop and Rolykit storage unit onto QVC's domestic airwaves in 1992; in 1995, she placed them on QVC's international home shopping shows. Mangano says sales of these products have skyrocketed since debuting on QVC international. "Six years ago when I started, our initial sales were under $10,000 for the year," says Mangano. "This past year, we did almost $20 million."

In non-English speaking countries where her segments air, interpreters translate her live broadcast sentence-by-sentence. And other than occasionally replacing an American word with an indigenous term, Mangano's pitches remain largely the same no matter where they air. Even international fulfillment is no problem for Mangano; QVC handles it for her.

Mangano launched her Deer Park, New York, company, Ingenious Designs Inc., in 1990. She sees video retailing as a marketing boon for entrepreneurial exporters. Without home shopping, she says, "I wouldn't have made it [overseas]."