Dang, we buried the lede on Qurate Retail’s fourth-quarter results: HSN has a new president, Stacy Bowe, replacing Rob Muller.
The CEO of Qurate, the parent of both HSN and QV, announced the news last week that Bowe, who has been serving as the chief merchant at QVC U.S. since joining the company in 2022, is hopping over to lead HSN.
David Rawlinson described Bowe as “one of the driving forces behind the improvement at QVC, including rapidly recalibrating our buying program, improving our inventory levels and bringing freshness and newness to the assortment.”
He said that prior to QVC, Bowe was at G-III Apparel Group and Macy’s.
“I would like to thank Rob Muller who has distinguished 23 years of extraordinary contributions to the company including serving for the last two years as president of HSN,” Rawlinson said.
Thanks for nothin’, we’re sure Muller was thinking.
“In summary, our business reached an inflection point in the third quarter of 2023,” Rawlinson said. “We have made substantial progress in stabilizing revenue and growing cash flow and profitability. We look forward to continuing to drive improved results in 2024 while preparing the business for its future of multi-platform growth.”
Welcome to the hot seat, Stacy!
For the die-hard fans, or masochists, among you, here are snippers from the earnings call. Want to know how much Barefoot Dreams sold on Cyber Monday? It’s here.
And BTW, here is the entire transcript for the call.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/qurate-retail-inc-nasdaq-qrtea-154203339.html
Snippets:
In March, self-taught cake artist and social media influencer, Yolanda Gampp who has 4.5 million YouTube subscribers and 2.8 million Instagram followers will introduce a new bakeware line. Many other celebrities will join us this year and we look forward to sharing more on future calls. And finally, we continue to provide value to customers through compelling product values, exposure to their favorite host and celebrities, and importantly our engaging programming. Our programming is enhanced by destination and mass events, especially around the holiday season. We hosted a 49-hour nonstop holiday party across channels and platforms with fun holiday shopping and special pop-in personalities. 680,000 customers shop the weekend, including more than 40,000 new customers.
The event generated 81 million views across social platforms. It features several live streams, including holiday guides to get together with Jimmy Garth, holiday head-to-toe style with experts, high chocolate cocktails and holiday recipes in 30 minutes with Fabio Pavani. We have also appeared on other powerful platforms to fuel engagement. QVC host presented gift ideas on popular talk shows including The Drew Barrymore Show and the Tamron Hall Show to promote our Holiday Giftathon. We remain excited about the value proposition that makes QVC and HSN unique and we’ll continue leveraging this model as we expand across platforms.
We are pleased that QxH grew market share as top line performance largely outpaced discretionary retail for the second consecutive quarter. Throughout the year, we have maintained focus on obtaining new higher-quality inventory that would excite our customers and provide them with value. We reinvigorated our programming and honed the special relationship our customers have with Host, which led to continued high engagement, growing total linear minutes viewed 15% compared to the prior year.
Consistent with historical averages, QxH existing customers made up half of total customer count that generated 90% of 2023 sales. They purchased 31 items in 2023 and spent $1,600 on average. The strength of engagement is even more evident, and our best customers in QVC US, who are defined as purchasing at least 20 times a year. They were 17% of the count which generated 76% of the sales in 2023. They purchased, on average, 76 items in the year and increased their average spend 9% year-on-year to $3,900.
Rather than growing the file with expensive-to-obtain and hard-to-retain transient customers for now we are concentrating on stabilizing our customer file, retaining our best customers and returning to new customer growth year-over-year that will contribute to customer file growth over time. We believe this is the prudent and profitable path and gives us the stability we need to continue to deliver on Project Athens in 2024. We also believe it sets us up nicely for customer file growth in 2025. Now I would like to touch again while Qurate’s business model is differentiated across retail and the value we bring to customers, vendors and celebrities. Starting with vendors. Our platform continues to be very attractive to both new and existing vendors.
We move meaningful volume and provide a scaled platform to connect with customers on a personal level and share product stories. We had impressive sell-through rates in Q4 across a range of price points and in particular on higher end products where we were able to demonstrate compelling value for unique products. For example at QVC, we offered Fire Light lab-grown diamonds from two carats to nine carats ranging in price from $1,300 to $5,000. The entire collection was well received selling out across sizes and products including a sold-out non-carat tennis bracelet. We also sold $5.7 million of Ninja Woodfire of electric smoker and outdoor grill moving 19,000 units priced at $300 a piece. At HSN, we sold out of a day [indiscernible] with a price point in excess of $1,000 over Black Friday weekend.
In Home Décor, we sold $6 million of Barefoot Dreams luxury throw on Cyber Monday. In Beauty, we sold 40,000 units of an Elemis cream in one day and 114,000 units of [indiscernible] velocity gift set in two days. The scale of this platform is very difficult to replicate and attractive to existing and new vendors. We debut a new brand in tights, Sheertex selling $2.4 million in just a couple of hours. We introduced a new leather handbag and luggage brand Hawkins that sold $340,000 in 11 minutes.
QVC and HSN have always been a home for celebrities engaging personalities and entrepreneurs. We welcome many familiar and new faces in the fourth quarter with a great pipeline planned for 2024. At QVC Lawrence Zarian launched BEAUTIFUL, an exclusive fashion collection of dresses, outwear and accessories.
In connection with the launch we conducted a satellite media tour with a nationally syndicated segment on Extra. At HSN, we teamed up with legendary singer Dolly Parton for the presale of our debut rock album Rockstar. Iconic Singer Chaka Khan launched her own perfume. Singer Katherine McPhee debut her jewelry line Radiance by Absolute. Erin Andrews launched her Sportswear line. Wolfgang Puck celebrated his 25th year with HSN with a new cook wear line. During his time with HSN, he has generated $600 million in sales.
Numerous other celebrities have teamed up with us recently and our 2024 celebrities lineup is fantastic. In January, Scarlett Johansson debuted a new beauty line called the Outset. Actress Christina Ricci came on air as the new brand ambassador for Lancer Skincare.
Homeshoppingista's Blog By Linda Moss 