“What we realized is that our form of getting close to the customer was going to have to shift because where the consumer was spending their time was shifting pretty dramatically,” QVC Group chief business development officer Brian Beitler told Fortune at a panel at the eTail conference last month in Palm Springs, Calif.
Social commerce is behind about $150 billion in U.S. consumer spending right now and QVC wants in. Beitler sees scrolling on TikTok as analogous to surfing TV channels. When QVC started in the 1980’s, it succeeded by grabbing people’s attention as they channel-surfed past QVC or HSN and then clicked right back when they saw a product or moment that grabbed them.
Last year, a few months after launching the TikTok partnership, QVC, a publicly traded company controlled by longtime media mogul John Malone, said some 74,000 TikTok creators had featured QVC products on their shoppable videos and livestreams, but Beitler declined to provide an updated number, saying it was better to focus on partners looking to build a sustainable sales channel.
QVC has clear parameters for the ideal partners to showcase its products on TikTok. “They should come across as having a level of expertise and a level of knowledge,” Beitler said, adding that authenticity in the storytelling is key.
But to be successful, he said, brands might need an attitude shift on how they work with collaborators. “The most difficult thing for brands and retailers, for those of us in this room, is you have to relinquish a bit of control,” said Beitler. “You’ll give them information on the product and trust them then to use that in an authentic and high-trust way with their audiences.”
